Feet on the Street at Navigate ‘19

They say everything is bigger in Texas and that idiom holds true with Navigate ‘19. This week identity champions and practitioners from all over the world are in Austin, Texas for Navigate ’19, the identity conference. Every year we say this is the biggest Navigate yet because it always has been, but we have really outdone ourselves this year. We are proud to say this is the largest Navigate to date, with a sold-out crowd of more than 1,200 identity professionals. We heard from our executives, a guest keynote and learned a lot from our breakout sessions during day one of the conference. Let’s dive in.

Privacy is Dead

Navigate ’19 kicked off with a keynote address from SailPoint’s CEO Mark McClain who made a powerful statement by declaring “privacy is dead.” We killed it with our affinity to share on social media, says Mark. Similarly, as companies continue to move more and more towards the digital transformation, this has promoted an increase in collaboration and sharing at the business level. Naturally, this has introduced a lot more risk, and yes, reduced any semblance of privacy we thought we had left. The focus on cyber risk is now easily felt not just at the executive level but now also at the board level, and among government bodies, and that wasn’t always the case. It is for this reason that identity has become the number one tool for CIOs and CISOs today, Mark explained. Along with SailPoint’s focus on helping its customers to drive a more comprehensive approach to identity given today’s reality – governing all, governing deep and governing smart – Mark previewed the next generation of identity governance to the crowd in the room. That next generation of identity, says Mark, is here – SailPoint Predictive Identity.  Pro tip: You’re going to hear this a lot at this year’s Navigate and for good reason. We believe that SailPoint Predictive Identity will change the way identity is done. Even though privacy might be on its deathbed, with SailPoint Predictive Identity, you can manage threats by protecting your organization in a smart, ‘next gen’ way.

Learn more about SailPoint Predictive Identity

The Future of Identity

Mark’s riveting keynote brings us to this question: How are organizations going to meet these challenges head-on, as the digital transformation keeps chugging along? This was the heart of Paul Trulove’s, chief product officer at SailPoint, Navigate ’19 keynote address The Future of Identity. Much of that future state of identity will include the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Learn more about Paul’s keynote and the future of identity

Sting, The Police and Identity… What This Means For You

Later on, in the morning keynotes, Mike Kiser made a fascinating revelation about how Sting, The Police and identity have something in common: it’s all about layering. “Every Breath You Take” was a simple song at first pass but turned into a master-class banger for karaoke fans everywhere. So, how did they do this? By combining the tracks, returning to the norm and predicting the future. SailPoint wants to do the same in identity, moving from a simple concept to a masterwork of identity. And – as you may have guessed, you can do this with the help of AI and ML infused into your identity program, also known as SailPoint Predictive Identity.

Privacy is Dead Part Two

We also heard from our guest speaker Dr. Jennifer Golbeck with her Navigate ’19 keynote Datashock. Jennifer is an associate professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Jennifer focused her talk on how we interact with seeing our information online. Jennifer helped Navigators learn about the inner workings of Internet tools (that so many of us use daily) to understand the long-term effects our choices and actions will have when we put our personal information online for the world to see, tying in nicely to the privacy theme we heard Mark talk about earlier in the day.

The Future of Identity Part Two

And to wrap up the day, Navigate attendees had a chance to attend a variety of breakout sessions. One of those was on the topic of The Future of Identity Governance, which was led by VP and Research Director Merritt Maxim. Like Mark mentioned earlier, cyberattacks are now a board-level concern. For today’s digital businesses, identity governance involves more than just provisioning and enforcing employee access to corporate apps and data. Security and identity practitioners must now govern and secure access across a hybrid application environment and myriad IoT devices for a variety of populations including bots, employees, partners, and customers — all without impacting user experience.

Well, what a day! What’s in store for day two of Navigate ‘19? Follow along on Twitter, the blog and via #SPNav19 to find out more about what attendees are learning at THE identity governance conference. And I’ll be back tomorrow with a Feet on the Street Recap—but this time video style— of how the second day went for us as we end Navigate ’19 with our legendary reception party.