New Executive Director and Identity Management – Jeff Reich, The Identity Defined Security Alliance

This is texturing TV. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Tech strong TV.

My next guest is a friend of mine. I've known in the security world and the well devops World 2 for many many years. His name is Jeff Rich.

Jeff is gonna well, Jeff is gonna tell us about Jeff. Hey, Jeff welcome. Thank you Alan.

It's great to be here and it's great to see you. Absolutely. Hey, Jeff, let's let's start off with a little of the Jeff Rich story.

If you don't mind being humble right now humble. You can be I am I'm shy sometimes you have to draw me side it that's the word that comes to mind. Yeah, so I'm really proud to talk about I recently joined the identity to find security Alliance as the executive director.

I've been here six seven weeks already at this point and really enjoying it. It's an opportunity to get involved with not only identity and security vendors that are supplying the right tools for people but really starting to focus on what I call the identity custodians all of the companies that end up keeping identities or holding identities for consumers for one reason or another and everyone has one they need to be where what tools are out there. What what are the best practices how can they best do that?

And that ends up driving? Down to how should consumers take steps to ensure their identity is protected appropriately. So I'm really enjoying it.

I'm if you couldn't tell I'm really into it. I get it but we're gonna spend most of our conversation talking about this Alliance, but Jeff Quebec not everyone out here knows Jeff give them a little of your background sure. I've been in the industry close to 50 years.

I started off doing some private security worked in a little work with law enforcement went back to school and Ended up starting with EDS and then quickly went to Arco oil and gas company and for there. I was there 14 years, which is a reason I mentioning it started their security and risk management program from there. I started the risk and Security Management program at Dell.

I started security risk program at Rackspace a couple of financial services firms, and I've been involved in a few startups since then as well. I was with the cloud security lineage before I came over to the identity defined security Alliance. So if you haven't picked up from that, I really like building things.

Absolutely. You've you've helped not only companies you work for but by being a friend to many entrepreneur entrepreneurial types in the industry and help them with their companies and you know in the years. I know you you.

Always always been involved in that as well as Community, right? You're a big Community guy. And and that's Pretty you know, that's excellent as well.

So Jeff. identity defined security Alliance Let's start with that. What's the mission?

The mission is to drive home across the security vendor and identity vendor industry and down through that ecosystem the importance of what identity means because there's a lot of different identities out there right now. What steps we need to take to manage it correctly and protect it correctly. And in the long run what steps do we need to take to dissolve some of them?

And I bring that up because most people miss that part. Yeah, they really do, you know in my mind Jeff. I always use to say that I am identity act.

This management was the killer Security app for the cloud right? Because when we truly move to the cloud Security the whole model sort of turned right? It was no longer that mote and Castle so to model it was a different.

It was a distributed model. Assets are all over the place various cloud data centers and Cloud providers. As well as with SAS.

Applications and you know, it's all over. And really the kind of the glue that binds that you know, the way we like the choke point like we used to have it the mountain castle, right the drawbridge. So just be was the identity and access management piece of it, but what I've seen over the Last several years, is that identity and access management?

have sort of cleaved and so we have identity management and then we have access management and though they're related. They're actually two. separate Pieces right?

What is making sure Jeff is Jeff? And one is because Jeff is Jeff. This is what he could do.

Does that make sense to you? It does and I think that's an accurate representation. However, I think there is a concept that although it's not brand new is beginning to get traction that's going to start bringing those back together again, and that's zero trust.

Yes. because zero trust is obviously, you know, so if anyone who is at RSA last year, and I think there was 26,000 of us and a good portion of those Cutco fit, but thank God you're not as serious is in 2020, but You know zero trust was on everyone's lips. It was the theme.

Of that show last year and it has been you know, one of the top themes in security now for a while. Yeah, and I think it's important not because I'm saying oh zero trust is gonna solve all your problems. In fact zero trust me create new problems for you, but there were problems you already actually had used it to know about and I'm not saying zero trust should be used everywhere either.

However, when you use zero trust in the right environment at every single point where any action is going to take place, you ask, who are you prove it? And then let's determine what you can do. Absolutely.

And you're right that does bring identity and access back together. So is that Jeff's view of it, or is that the identity defined security alliances view of it or both? I'd say we're pretty well aligned on it.

Now. It's not the only answer but I do think we're lined on that is helps drop being a driving force for bringing those together again, you know, you mentioned the mode, you know, I go back sometimes to analogy of if you go back to if there was an Army Camp, so I'm wearing their centuries on post. What question did they always ask when someone approached?

Yeah, who goes there who goes there? Yeah that there you go. That's exactly what we're talking about.

Yeah, and it's who as in identity not where? right in Access so Jeff You know, we've seen a lot of Alliance and not I don't know about the folks out there. But in my world I've seen a lot of alliances start and frankly stop over the years because any industry Alliance Well, it needs critical mass of people who are involved.

You need to get past the I call it the cooperation right because you you need leading vendors leading voices leading lights in a particular industry to put aside their differences if even momentarily to come together to work for the common good of the community. You need the community. Right, you need finances, right because nothing is not for profit or not.

You still need money to run things. You need dedicated people like yourself. Talk to me about the equality idsa or you say it out.

No, I'm too lazy. Just saying all the time. I call it the idea say but identity you find security line still works.

You know that that's what you see right up there and and we're really proud of our members. org. So there was a good opportunity to drop that in and you're right.

It all depends on who's involved what their level of commitment is and and your ultimate audience and that's without all of that and Alliance makes no sense. Absolutely. We have we feel the right combination of all of that.

Now, we have our our founding executive director. Julie Smith is in the process over the next couple of weeks of finishing her role here and retiring to the board for the alliance and from that point forward. I guess I have the wheel and she's done a fantastic job, especially of aligning all these vendors together and checking their guns at the door.

I am from Texas, so I had to buy I get it and and they've done a great job of saying we need to lift the industry and the the world in community and we don't compete it. It almost isn't co-opetition. It really is cooperation with in the confines of idsa knowing that they're all going to compete and that pie is huge.

They all know that even if any one of them gets a big chunk of the pie. They're still a whole lot left for everyone to go get absolutely. So Jeff, I I don't want to put you on the spot.

I know you don't have notes in front of you. In terms of just so what goes into being a member, right? I imagine this corporate memberships individual memberships.

Oh there for these if you can say or like what goes into being a member of the ideas, there's three levels of membership that we have here. There's corporate. Contender and contributor so the vendor member which right now really comprises most of our members are The Usual Suspects, you'll see that offer either identity management services or Federated Identity or IAM services and everything else around that that we've already pretty much talked about the purpose of being a vendor membership is threefold one you get to participate in the research subcommittees that we have that produce some artifacts whether it's a Blog a webinar or a white paper, whatever it's going to be on any given topic a couple of examples are matching the best practices that we've already documented against whatever new standard comes out of nist or ISO mapping that to say.

Hey, here's the best practices we have here's how it aligned with the standard that you may be obligated to meet so you get an opportunity to work on in those groups. The second is to be able to Meet with your competition outside of idsa, but in idsa talk about our you know, are you seeing this problem yet? We're seeing it too and it's a great opportunity to share some of those experiences and the third is as a vendor you have an opportunity to do a promoted webinar that we offer and and it's dedicated to you.

No other sponsor. It's not a sales opportunity. It's thought leadership but clearly your logos can be in the background.

It's gonna be evident that you're from The Firm you talk about there's some other benefit too. I won't go through the entire list as a corporate member which which costs about half of you know, a standard vendor membership is around 10,000 a year. We do pro rate that during the year a corporate membership is about half that and as a corporate member you get many of those other benefits.

You don't have the opportunity to have a webinar talking about thought leadership necessarily however going forward we're looking into maybe working with things like text on TV and others to say do we want to have some sort of routine podcast where we can talk about what their experiences are. It's a great idea. We'll talk about it offline.

And then on the third is as a contributed member and that costs 250 a year you get some of those same benefits, but obviously without the webinar necessarily and you don't necessarily have the logo or identification of your company, either on our web page or our logo on your web page. It's individual. So those are the three main levels of membership we have.

We're gonna be running low on time shortly. I want to make sure you get as much as I can and Jeff. According my audience out here.

They're cyber people. They're devops people. They're Cloud people Cloud native.

You know, where does rubber meet the road? How did they engage you mentioned webinars? You mentioned virtual events?

Where can they go to get information on these? So as I mentioned earlier, our website is IDs Alliance when we're dot org. And one thing I want to mention is coming up on April 11th that it happens on the second Tuesday of every year we have identity management day.

This is a free online event. We currently have about a thousand people registered to attend. And we do have throughout the day and I've strongly recommend you do this.

You don't have to attend all day. Although we recommend it but you can go into one session not go the next one pop into the next we have 11 different sessions. We have 20 different speakers up there.

We have a sponsor session three when our blocks for you to be able to go to a sponsor booth and either find out about some of what your sponsor might offer or download a document or watch a video. We also have a gamification throughout that allows you to as you go to different sessions or visit different vendors or download a document you get points for that at the end of day we're gonna have a drawing for some prizes. And so throughout you have the opportunity to see some great presentations.

Here are some great experiences learn about different topics it's free. And if for some reason you can't attend on the 11th, we will be recording each of the session and you'll be able to get to that through when I talk channel on webinars I love it. Jeff I think you're the right man for this job.

They're lucky to have you there. Best of luck leading the idsa going forward and I we hope to have you on a regular as a regular here at techstroke TV. So and I will see you next month at RSA.

Thank you Alan. I look forward to it. Thank you very much for the opportunity and I'll see you in about a month.

Yeah. Jeff Rich from the idsa. That's the identity defined security Alliance.

It's IDs Alliance calm. Check it out. And we're going to take a break here on Tech strong.

We'll be right back.