What Topics Will You Be Covering At Forrester?

I am very excited to be covering identity and access management (IAM), with a focus on the workforce environment (business to employee). I will also collaborate with Forrester’s other IAM analyst, Andras Cser. Some areas and topics that I hope to explore include:

  • How to optimize workforce IAM technologies to maximize employee experience and productivity without sacrificing on security.
  • Evaluating what existing IAM technologies and services, including identity as a service, single sign-on, multifactor authentication, privileged access management, identity management and governance, and orchestration, best suit the needs of enterprises given their business characteristics and objectives
  • Detailing best practices, including techniques and frameworks that can be applied to develop a robust IAM program and team and deploy IAM technologies quickly and effectively.
  • Identifying where and how expertise from systems integrators and services partners can be best leveraged to augment in-house IAM capabilities and to accelerate IAM project timelines.

Tell Us About Yourself!

Early in my career, I had the good fortune to be involved with a “first of its kind” smart card project for a large financial services company. That experience had a great influence on not only my approach to tackling security problems but also how to drive projects and manage teams effectively. I gained valuable experience on the art of combining people, process, and technology to make solutions successful, even when not all aspects go completely as planned — as often happens with any leading-edge solution or large-scale initiative.

I grew up in a small, coastal town north of Boston (Essex, MA) and currently reside in Beverly, Massachusetts. Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my wife, our two boys, and our two dogs. Now that my boys are older, I am finding myself with more time on my hands, so I have begun to embrace my Scottish heritage. I’ve started learning about single-malt whiskey, and I am looking forward to playing more golf in the coming years. Luckily for my wife and neighbors, there’s no plans to start playing the bagpipes (yet).

What Are The Key Issues In Workforce IAM Right Now?

There are many dynamics driving workforce IAM today, including:

  • Where and how we work and how that influences identity tasks such as multifactor authentication, access governance, and application authorization.
  • How the push/trend to the Zero Trust security model is changing the adage about security and convenience from being inversely proportional to now going hand in hand.
  • The increasing importance of AI and machine learning in automating numerous identity tasks such as access approvals and entitlement review and analysis.
  • IAM technology and services providers embracing customer centricity and user experience.

Identity and access management is the ultimate integration point from not only a technical standpoint but by virtue of living at the boundary of digital and human interaction.

I am motivated to help clients move past the alphabet soup that permeates today’s security landscape to identify realistic goals and objectives and to achieve meaningful benefits from their IAM program and supporting platforms.