How do you see the identity industry evolving, given that many people still use active directory?
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vCISO and COO in Software4 years ago
People are still using active directory everywhere. I see a lot of people just going to Azure AD if they can, but a lot of these legacy companies can't. If you get Azure AD, you don't have any internal network communication and you're good to go.
Azure AD is the answer. But it raises the question: how long can you survive if your competitors are eating your lunch? Because if you called me 20 years ago and said, “I want to build a business from scratch tomorrow,” I’d have to set up a bunch of servers and you'd have to buy a bunch of expensive software. And it would take a lot of time. Now I can take a credit card and have a ticketing system, or a financial system, and a CRM system up and running in a couple of hours, and you’re ready to go. You have a new business.
These companies that are leaning on old technologies and don't want to move forward are eventually going to be disrupted by people that are. In fact, some of them might even be people who left the company that's struggling, and think, “I'll go set up another company. I'll compete with you tomorrow, because it won’t take me as long to set this up.” There is a real risk of being completely taken out.
And there are little pockets of that technology all over the world, where you've been running on AD, but you're not patching. You’ve been getting away with it for a long time, but the cautionary tale is that your day of reckoning is coming. Your competitors can spin faster, they're safer, they're more secure, and all the stuff you've been ignoring for 20 years will become a problem for you at some point.