by Andy Land, Vice President of Marketing
Last week I wrote about identity information as the product. In this post, I am following up with two more interesting happenings.
- Google Changing Its Privacy Policy
- Facebook and the European Commission Facing Off (Pun Intended) Over Privacy of Personal Data
These stories drive home what I previously mentioned: that identity information is extremely valuable. Google and Facebook thrive on monetizing identity information, which makes our friends in government worried (see Congressional response to Google in the US and the European Commission mentioned above). Thus, it might seem that the privacy around identity information is a matter of opinion. On one side we have the vendors making money off of it, who want the identity data to flow more freely, and on the other side we have the government, worried about the consequences to our society.
These stories bring up one of the core dilemmas in technology – open vs. secure (or in this case, private). Security professionals have struggled with this dilemma since the first corporate networks started. As my colleague Nick Crown says, “convenience wins.” We’re seeing that today in the enterprise, as IT is learning to deal with devices they previously did not support, plus lots of cloud-based applications. In the consumer world, the choice for all of us is: do we want to give up the privacy of our data in exchange for convenience? With the success of the social networking services, it seems as if many of us are voting “yes”.
Does it have to be this way? As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe we can make this economy around identity information even bigger and more successful if we can involve the user in an open, transparent fashion in the sharing of identity information. At UnboundID, our vision for identity information is for the information to be used to grow the overall economy while respecting the user’s desires around privacy. We believe knowledge gained via trust generates user loyalty. User loyalty equals more revenue for vendors, who create fans and advocates for their brands and products, and in the process create a better product experience for users overall. We believe this new economy can be a win-win for users and vendors.
