What Does Rethink Identity Mean?

Learn the meaning behind the Rethink Identity vision from SailPoint CMO Juliette Rizkallah.

Learn more about SailPoint Predictive Identity™.

Video Transcript

Natalie Reina: Hi, I’m Natalie Reina with Identity Talks and today I’m with Hannah Giles and Juliette Rizkallah and today we’re going to talk about what does rethinking identity mean. SoI’m going to kick it over to Hannah because she’s going to ask Juliette, the first question.

Hannah Giles: Good morning, Juliette. It’s great to chat with you today and rethink identity. It’s the hot topic really everywhere as identity sort of takes shape in this world and this crisis. So we want to know what does rethink identity mean to you?

Juliette Rizkallah: Okay. Well, good morning Natalie and Hannah it’s great to be with you today. So rethink identity. I think rethink identity for me is really about moving past the first perception of identity that people have and that is usually that it’s access management. Right, people think about the additional identities are being able to access all sorts of application, usually in the cloud. But it is time now to rethink identity seriously. And the reason is, I think access management is the Facebook of identity, where you are able to share and collaborate, you know, with a lot of people through the SAAS application you’re enabled, you have access.

But we all know that Facebook without some sort of security can be dangerous. Well, identity governance is that security and that’s why we claim rethink identity as identity governance to add security to your identity management. So why is it security. Well, it gives controls to who has access to what and this is critical when in this world of, you know, sharing collaboration and so forth because that’s what hackers feed on right they will go and try to find accounts that have not been really monitored when people have access to things that they don’t even use and will start really getting into those accounts.

And from those accounts that they took over controls that are requesting access to other accounts and that’s really dangerous for, for any corporation to give their IP, their sensitive data, everything. So for me rethink identity as your security infrastructure, you have to have identity control. Do not stop at access management that is probably the most dangerous thing you can do today.

Hannah Giles: Yeah, that’s so important. The security aspect is on everyone’s minds so that’s some great insight Juliette and we appreciate you sharing that with us. Natalie Reina: Yeah. So my follow up question to that is given the global pandemic happening now and we had talked off camera earlier and you talked about how all of a sudden a flip switched and there was all these remote workers. So how can we make sure that with rethinking identity, we can keep these remote workers secure as we kind of embrace this new normal.

JulietteRizkallah: Right, I think, you know, the crisis, we’re going through and what it does lead to which is that, you know, global lockdown. I think has exacerbated what I just talked about, because, you know, sometime in March or April, depending on the countries or you are companies had overnight to figure out how to enable all their workers to be productive and that meant giving them access to the tools they need to do that work. So imagine companies having to flip that switch by getting access to tell them or 10s of thousands of employee in some case.

Well, what do you think that did? Especially if they don’t have identity governance that just gave access to everything to everybody. And not just their workers, their contractors, the new people they were bringing in in order to manufacture all those essential, you know, things that we needed those mask and sanitizing healthcare. You know, having to bring retired doctors and nurses all that had been provision, pretty much, you know, very fast in a way that get those people working.

But again if you think about that, hackers are just and we were you know if you were in the security world you were reading about health care companies in the worst time of their life being hacked, so security is really important. And that’s why you can do this and you do not slow the speed of enabling people and giving them access if you’re going identity governance.

But on top of that, you do it with control, you do it by understanding what type of new employees. Do I need to enable and what do they need to do. You understand what type of application they use and you do it with a switch with control, and with security so that those orphan accounts, that over provisioning that happen does not jeopardize in time of crisis, like we have any of the sensitive data that corporation tried to protect in normal times so dearly.

Hannah Giles: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense it’s affecting everybody. So, you know, we’ve got to keep people moving and not you know sacrifice security.

Juliette Rizkallah: Yeah, and I think that’s what you’re saying, what you’re saying is right Hannah, it affects everybody. A lot of people thought okay, the access management is for everybody. The identity governance for companies that may be regulated I be regulated are very large companies. But no, I mean you can be, you know, a small manufacturer in the Midwest somewhere with some IP and so forth you want to protect and you’re going to have to be able to enable some of your workers and do it with access with control during a time of crisis or in normal time. I mean, as I said, this pandemic is accelerating this this problem and challenge that companies have but I will not just talk about it because of a pandemic and make our time of crisis.

I will just say this is just you know something, you got to do to be to be secure and that should become part of the DNA. In some ways when you look at identity management and you have the access management and the identity governance, the identity governance is really the part of the brain of identity management, it is what makes you secure, what protects sensitive data, what, just makes sure that our workers, our contractors and suppliers can be effective and productive working with you, but in a secure and protected way.

Natalie Reina: Well, you heard it here first. Identity is security. It’s not just about access management. I’m Natalie Reina and today we spoke with Hannah and Juliette about rethinking identity and what it means for the new normal with the remote workforce. And there will be many more rethink identity videos up on Identity Talks in the digital hub. So stay tuned. Thank you.