Yesterday’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace event was a bit of a blur. Really good conversations. Lots of new ideas swimming through my head. Here are some of the highlights:
New faces from outside the echo chamber
First and foremost, there were a lot of new faces and new companies at the NSTIC event. The NSTIC team did an admirable job of getting companies to the table that hadn’t been there before. There were retailers, energy companies, and banks in the room who had never engaged with the identity community before. This is a huge step forward. As I wrote about last week, participation, specifically relying party participation, is critical to the success of NSTIC. As Senator Mikulski said, “The key to a voluntary system is actually having volunteers.” If the event was indication, there is a new wave of volunteers, willing to participate in NSTIC.
Business of Identity
The bulk of our conversations yesterday were regarding the business impact of better identity practices. Companies pointed to existing inefficiencies that they can remove from their business simply by starting to accept federated credentials. These sorts of scenarios weren’t particularly complex, which is why they have good chance to succeed. They are simple scenarios with real business impact – exactly the kind of thing identity teams need in order to demonstrate value.
What was even better was that these simple scenarios were the stepping-stone to more complex, new business opportunities. Remove inefficiencies, then unlock new business, repeat. We’ll be talking more about these opportunities in future blog posts and in our research.
Continue reading The Business of Identity: Thoughts from the NSTIC White House Event