Insights from Inside

Identity and the Network Are Redefining Old Roles

By Michelle Dennedy
Chief Privacy Officer
Welcome to this edition of Sun Identity Insights. Last time, we took a look at how the network is revolutionizing the way people communicate and connect — and the crucial role of identity management in this time of dramatic change.

Everywhere you look, there’s evidence of the transformation. I see it in my own professional life, serving as chief privacy officer (CPO) for Sun. Five years ago, there were less than a handful of privacy professionals and even fewer privacy offices operating as independent business units within organizations to oversee data privacy. That’s just one example of how traditional executive roles that have been defined in certain ways for years are now being completely redefined by the emergence of the network.

The Strategic CIO
What got me thinking about all of this was that I ran across an article about chief information officers (CIOs) in a technology magazine that came out back in 2000. In it, an analyst with what is perhaps the most prominent group of technology researchers and analysts in the world observed that “most CIOs are completely bogged down with the day-to-day challenges associated with just keeping the computer systems running.” How true that was then! But nothing could be further from the truth now.

Today, the CIO’s role has changed from “keeping the lights on” to realizing significant business improvements through the strategic management of technology. Identity management provides a good example of this. Back when the aforementioned technology magazine article was published, identity management was largely about just getting employees provisioned faster and more efficiently. Talk about being “bogged down with day-to-day challenges”!

But now? CIOs are making strategic choices about identity management solutions that can:

• Foster online partnerships among enterprises to deliver more revenue-producing services
• Transform auditing and compliance processes into tools for business improvement
• Reveal business opportunities in traditionally tactical areas such as security

It’s hard to believe, considering the vital role of the CIO now, but there were those who predicted back in 2000 that this office would eventually disappear altogether. As one consultant opined, “we needed CIOs for the early days of fitting computers into a company, but it won’t last.” Indeed.

The Horizontal CEO
In the wake of the network revolution, the CEO, like the CIO, will never be the same. Once upon a time, CEOs were remote figures, distanced from employees, shareholders, and others by traditional corporate hierarchies. Any pronouncement a CEO might have about business and industry in general or the enterprise in particular had to make its way down the hierarchy, with an executive one level below the chief executive disseminating the information to the next level, and so forth.

In the networked world, executive leadership and influence are decidedly horizontal, rather than hierarchical. For example, when Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has an insight to share about business or technology, he can instantly and openly share it on his blog. His statement that “joining the network is a planetary imperative” had an immediate and powerful impact by virtue of being communicated to everyone instantaneously.

This shift from hierarchical to horizontal access to CEOs and their visions has made them far more approachable and much more influential in the world at large than ever before.

The Newly Minted CPO
In addition to radically transforming the CIO and the CEO, the network has also created a new C-level executive: the CPO. As Sun’s privacy officer, it’s my job to see to it that the privacy of personal information is protected as data flows through the network.

It’s all about identity — seeing to it that one’s identity, and the personally identifiable information associated with it, is kept private and protected when data travels over the network, when that data stops for a rest along the way, and when it is ultimately deleted at the end of its useful lifespan. Toward that end, it’s the CPO’s job to:

• Create, update, and enforce corporate privacy policies that work for both organizations and the people who interact with them — by, for example, making sure that network communications that include personally identifiable information are appropriately encrypted, scrambled, segmented or masked
• Act as an ombudsman when customers have privacy concerns — if, for example, someone is worried about whether the outsourcing of a particular process could put their personal information at risk
• Ensure that interactive communications that extend to multiple countries adhere to local rules and regulations governing privacy in those regions
• Preserve and enhance the value associated with personally identifiable information that is managed by the organization

Those are just a few of the CPO’s responsibilities. And to think that this job category didn’t even exist until the new millennium! It’s one more good example of how much the network is changing the way the world does business.