The Real Identity Blog

My wife, a brilliant numbers person, spent many years in the classroom as a teacher, until I finally convinced her to forgo the incredible pay and astounding benefits in exchange for life as a highly-in-demand math tutor. As a tutor, she typically gets two kinds of kids: the ones who can use a little (or a lot of) help, and the ones who are already killing it but have parents that want them to kill it even harder.

I’ve been in the security space for decades. The bulk of that time has been in identity and access management (IAM). I’ve even published a McGraw-Hill book on the subject. IAM is my baby. But my time in IAM has always been focusing on Day One stuff, as in, I know who you are, so now I’m going to provision you to the apps you can use as part of your role. Recently, I got an invite to do Day Zero stuff, as in, I don't provision you until I know you are truly who you say you are. Day Zero is ID verification. So I've moved my focus a little farther up the stack, touching the identities before they're fully formed.  I made this career change because 1) I wanted a change of scene, and 2) Sunil Mahdu.

As the premier outlet for vendors and customers in the financial services industry, Money20/20 is THE place to see the latest products in fintech, as well as learn about future trends. But like with Gartner Conferences or Oracle OpenWorld or the Identity Summit, you still have a measure of vendors who seem to be saying similar things. How can every vendor truly be the best? It takes a lot to rise above the noise and differentiate. We like to think Socure did that very thing this year. We were loud and fun, but we also proved that we’re three steps ahead when it comes to identity fraud prevention and auto-acceptance.

My lovely wife taught math for years. She’s passionate about her subject, which is why she’s very sought after as a tutor for everyone from little kids to grad students. I think what she loves about math is the fact that it’s so absolute. It’s either right or wrong, and it unlocks the secrets to how the universe works. There’s no subjectivity to it (unless you’re a political pollster), and numbers don’t lie (unless you were Enron’s accountant).