A whole month for one P
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Mark T. shares on LinkedIn that he's reading the book on vacation before his next "Identiventure." Great word, that, and great location. Thanks, Mark!Hi superfriend,October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. How are you celebrating (or is that commiserating)?All Protection, all monthThis whole month is dedicated to Protection. We'll see a lot of the usual advice: turn on MFA, be alert to phishing attempts, and so on. It's not bad advice, and hey, it's highly identity-centric. But who's counting what the MFA rollout cost in help-desk time, and who's counting what it saved? Is anyone counting both?There's a Productivity story here — that's the hidden fifth P in Mastering Digital Identity. In the book, I told the story of an international bank whose individual lines of business kept making incremental Productivity decisions:Every app did things its own way, including user onboarding and authentication. Ten entirely different authentication technologies were in use, hindering both security and innovation. The bank had no one responsible for “identity” across the organization.Every line of business made a sensible efficiency call. Added up, they ultimately cost the bank tens of millions in identity services unification efforts.And in my recent talk “A History of the Login Box and Why It Still Sucks,” I broke down how the deployers of security controls keep deferring to the arbiters of efficiency, cost, and administrative simplicity, ending up with significantly weakened authentication methods.Even when the CIO is in charge of a unified and nominally strategic identity program, an efficiency metric with no counterweight for identity's other "jobs to be done" deserves serious scrutiny. Help-desk ticket load is a fine number for the CIO to execute on. Bind it to the share of logins on phishing-resistant methods, and it stops rewarding the shortcuts the login box keeps taking.
What does a metric do? Depends on what jobs it binds together, and who can do something about it.ICYMI “The Rise of the Shadow Man” — I opened Season 2 of Commvault's Ready. Or Not. podcast with host Nathan Macintosh, on non-human identities, autonomous agents, and the question underneath both: just because our agents can do everything for us, should they? Watch here.“Identity's Next Act: Trust, Delegation, and the AI Era” — Entrust's Identity Thread podcast, with host Ken Kadet and Entrust CISO Adam Dimopoulos, on how agentic AI is changing the foundational assumptions behind identity. Watch here.“UMA: What's Next?” — Identerati Office Hours #226 with host Mike Schwartz and my UMA for Agents co-conspirator Nick Gamb: "May your agent touch my stuff?" Watch here.Come find me October 20 — My morning keynote at FIDO Authenticate in Carlsbad, CA: “Why Passkeys Stall” and a book signing on October 19 courtesy of BalkanID — and use code EVE15 for 15% off registration.\* Conference details.November 4 — EWF, the Executive Women's Forum annual conference, in Denver, where I'll be speaking on “Who Owns Identity in Your Enterprise?” Event details.November 12 — The Identity Underground London Summit at The Ned, London: “The Identity Collision in the C-Suite.” Event details.NEW: December 7-9 — I'll be at the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit in Las Vegas. Details to come.If identity keeps landing on your desk without landing in your org chartThe conversation I have most often right now is with a leader who is already running identity like a product — and who can't get the authority, the budget, or the mandate to make that stick. If that's the room you're in, tell me about it. I'll tell you honestly whether it's a problem I can help with.Talk to Eve about advisory work |
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| All my best,EveP.S. If you haven't picked up Mastering Digital Identity yet, you can find out where to buy it — and grab your free bonus chapter at the same time — at masteringdigitalidentity.com. And if you have, it would be so valuable if you can leave a brief, honest review on Amazon.\*Discount code valid for non-FIDO member registrations only. FIDO Alliance members receive the lowest rates by selecting "member" during registration as a membership benefit; promotional codes cannot be combined with member pricing. Not sure if your company is a FIDO member? Check here. | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |