The week before last, I visited the European Identity Conference and  wanted to share our insights and experiences of the biggest event in our industry

Before the event

Looking at the timetable and the schedule, there were already some bad news. 

The first one was that my flight which was anyway scheduled to land at 11:00 PM in Berlin was getting delayed. This and the reputation of Deutsche Bahn (which unfortunately stayed loyal to it :)) meant that I was in my bed at 2:30 am (and the conference was starting at 8:00 AM).

The second one was that even before the start of the conference I was going to miss more than 50 percent of the sessions. Why? Well most of the time there were six in parallel, making it impossible to attend every one. Sure, the possibilities to download the presentations, to watch the videos, to ask the speakers questions after the event were there but at the end you cannot split yourself into six 🙂 And of course I wanted to speak to the vendors, the partners, the customers – not much time left 🙂 

Recap European Identity Conference 2024

During the event

The event was as usual organized very well. As mentioned before, there were up to six tracks running in parallel, so I had to choose what sessions to visit. As our core business is IGA, I concentrated on the topics which were closely related to it.  My personal takeaways:

  • Decentralized Identities – for me a topic for the future. The idea that you have an issuer of your digital identity and a lot of verifiers, which upon successfully verifying, will grant you access to their assets, so that you can add them in your wallet. For me here, the big challenge remains the lack of trust already existing in the physical world, which we cannot solve by simply digitalizing the processes. Verifiers will have always the freedom to choose whom to trust and if your issuer is not trustworthy… well bad luck. Even now people are stuck to their national IDs, and it is the right of every country and institution to decide if they deem that trustworthy.
  • We are at war and IAM is on the forefront. AI is a big thing, but unfortunately the bad guys also possess it. We have multiple weapons to support us (ITDR, XDR, etc.) but it is a difficult time.
  • Enterprises are more open to speak about their IGA experiences and how they solved their challenges. Even some of them are brave enough not to use a vendor solution but to do everything by themselves. Chapeau!
  • Le SAP IDM est mort, vive le successeur! One thing is certain- SAP IDM is EOL 2027. A lot of vendors want to ascend to the throne (the customers using the solution currently). What amazes me , that there is one certain vendor which is already recommended as a successor but still does not have the capabilities of modern IGA solutions. If that is a good idea, remains to be seen.

After the event

A lot of new acquaintances and partnerships. I saw a lot of friends, partners and customers, and it is always good to have an exchange face to face. I am very looking forward towards the next edition!

Categories: Events

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