Identity Management with Quest – Mark Logan, One Identity

This is texturing TV. Hey guys. Thanks for the throw.

We're here with Mark Logan. Who's the newly appointed CEO for one identity what we talking about everything from managing identities and zero trust, but Mark, welcome the show. closer to be here So What attracted you to one identity what do you think is gonna be the opportunity for the company and where are you gonna go from here Well, let me to start with the macro view.

So we participate in the broad cybersecurity industry as as you well know and the industry itself is is literally booming and a global way. So the overarching security industry is one that I've been in the past last three years. I was at a Sim vendor, which is a security information event management vendor.

So first and foremost great Market our subset of the market identity management is an equally fast growing in needed sub sector of cyber security. So so we're in a very hot space some would say a Recession Proof space and one identity has a quite a reputation for serving Market needs globally. I would say furthermore where we participate in the we have four different silos of solutions three of which are covered by Gartner group and Gartner group has has given us some very nice.

Leader leading quadrant magic quadrant status, so we just had one for the Pam Market privilege access management came out last week. So I think independent of where you look at our various key direct products, we've got leadership status in each one. So those are attractive.

I think if you look at the market today password management used to be a niche space it was basically kind of you know, a small group of cybersecurity people and either passionately involved in it or was fundamentally a chore that needed to be done either way. But is that changing as we looked this whole zero trust model and there is there much more of a conversation and awareness and manage identities and the need for it. And and how do you think that's gonna evolve?

We believe so Michael we believe it is is changing and is has maybe evolved from a nice to have to a must-have mandate and the stature of the ciso. For example Chief information security officers. They've become much more in the Forefront of securing and protecting their Enterprises.

So we do believe that our subset of this Market is I can continue to grow and it might be worth noting to two weeks ago. We launched a strategy part of our vision and we're calling it The unified identity unified identity management platform. So we're bringing together these four different key aspects of identity management into one unified platform and I suspect your listeners.

Will The Following will resonate with them. Chief information security officers cios Etc. They want less vendors in general.

They want more of a single point of accountability said coarsely one throat to choke. That's particularly Jermaine when it comes to this security assets. So there can't be finger pointing around potential for vulnerabilities or breaches Etc.

So this uniform unified platform approach brings together three key aspects of identity management. We think in a unique fashion one identity. So you'll hear more and more in your listeners may hear more more from us about this bringing together of these key disciplines.

We hear a lot more about this passwordless future that we're all supposedly marching too, but I think that may take some time. But how do you think identities might evolve around passwords versus when do I not use a password and once the mix of those things going to look like? Well, we're we're hard to say exactly where that will evolve.

And in fact, I'm four weeks on the job. So so all of the trends some of them are evolutionary, but but here's what I will say. We're doubling down on our investments in listening to our customers and and Diving and serving our customers.

I'll give you a couple of examples. We we just announced our customer Advisory Board and our customer event for Europe that's going to take place in November December. And then the reason for noting it right now Michael is that's an opportunity for us to further pulse our hundreds and thousands of customers around specifically what they need and we've been we've built our reputation on listening to our customers and together collectively driving forward with our roadmap and our Solutions.

We're doing the same event in in March in Miami with our us-based customers. So so I think the the answer to your question is we really pulse our customers and analysts in the market. In your brief conversations with those customers so far.

What's your sense of their biggest issues or their biggest source of angst right now? I think it does tie back to the unified platform approach that the big concern is no Chief Information Security Officer wants to have a vulnerability or a potential breach in which you can't be remediated because they're spending time figuring out did this come through one vendor or another? So this notion of bringing together vendors into one solution set that really is resonating one of the reasons.

We were the leader in our vision on the last privileged access management report from Gartner just last week it's because of just that that we're consolidating Solutions so that it's not a siled approach that really concerns csos cios. In fact the entire sea Suite What makes privilege access management so hard because cybercriminals are kind of counting on the fact that they can escalate privileges whenever they hack into something but it seems like we've had this problem for decades. So why can't we solve it?

One of the things that has just a double the the challenge is everybody's now remote. So back in about early March of 2020. Most Enterprises went from 90% on site and 10% remote to flipping that so our customers come to us and they'll say that protecting a much greater threat landscape is one of the big challenges and the pan Market goes to addressing this area.

However, it continues to be a challenge for for security officers. It seems like if I think back in time, we all sort of walked away from the endpoint a little bit and focus more on the network firewall. And then we had the pandemic come and more of the ransomware attacks were aimed at the endpoint.

So, you know or we now shifting to a point where maybe there is no perimeter and people are thinking about things really in terms of securing users and identities and then working their way back from there. We are. I think you've hit the nail on the head Michael because the the users are a key point of vulnerability either well accidentally or it could be malic intent.

So there are Bad actors inside of the Enterprise and of course to your point, they're bad actors outside of the Enterprise. But but since the end point is an Ever Changing and fluid environment particularly with everybody being remote and virtual if you can zero in on the individual, that's the starting point. Today most people assume that their username and password is sitting on the dark web somewhere.

Is there a set of best practices in your mind for managing passwords that prevent that or those passwords and usernames from being used in a malicious way do we need to change them more often? And what does that look like? Because it seems like we really don't do that very well.

Yes, so so we think that is a best practice but we we have fairly fairly direct protocols with that. We advise our customers with that don't require ongoing password changes. If you have the right identity Management Solutions that implemented so it's not necessarily a mandate to continue to change passwords.

It really depends upon the solution identity. I want identity don't require that with our Solutions. All right, you guys are connected to Quest or Associated requests.

And what's that relationship look like and how well might that of all well to launch standing a partnership. So we are a division of quests, but with the announcing of my appointment just a couple of days ago. We also announced that we are going to begin the long journey of setting up one identity as a separate entity.

So that takes a significant amount of time. It could be measured in you know, 12 to 18 months. They will always be a very very tight partnership with Quest the the products come together in many appropriate Fashions having said that one identity with separation and as we take time to stand up as a as a separate entity, we'll have soul and singular focus on identity management.

All right looking at a year from now. What's the definition of success for you guys? Having event we will have advanced in this journey to to separate and stand ourselves up as a standalone entity.

We will have delivered upon even more significant linkages on our unified platform such that really that we don't see any competitors that have the suite of offerings that we have Michael and when we think Enterprises particularly large Global Enterprises will more more gravitate towards this type of solutions that we will see that the type of a cross reporting cross alert reporting correlation reporting and analytics that are really unmatched in the industry. So delivering on this Vision a year from now, we think we'll put us in a very unique status within the identity management Marketplace. Right.

Hey Mark best of luck. Thank you, Michael. I really enjoyed meeting you and I've enjoyed the the interview.

Alright, thanks for being on the show. Great. Thank you.

All right back to you guys in the studio.