Welcome to the Age of Identity
On Thursday, June 3, Okta is hosting our next big virtual conference, Age of Identity: A Public Sector Forum. The event will feature top leaders and decision-makers from the public sector IT community as well as Okta’s CEO Todd McKinnon and World Wide President of GTM Operations, Susan St. Ledger.
Public sector organizations are responsible for solving some of the world's most difficult problems, from defense and national security to education and healthcare. Now is the time to explore the role of identity and how identity and access management solutions can reshape the future of public sector operations.
At the forum, you’ll find sessions discussing the importance of building identity-centric trust with cloud services, the growing popularity of Zero Trust in modern organizations, and the need for a unified trust and policy layer that enables — instead of detracting from — a strong cybersecurity posture.
The rise of nation-state-sponsored cybercrime means that governments are under even more pressure to protect the critical government agencies that keep our country running. We’re hosting this event just a few short weeks after the Biden Administration released the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.
This executive order which promotes Zero Trust, enhanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and software development standards, signals a major step forward in ensuring that the U.S. government has the resources and focus required to address our cybersecurity needs. But the private tech sector has its own responsibility to do its part to support the government.
Digital transformation has not only highlighted the importance of the cloud but it’s also shown us that technology can and should be a critical enabler of an organization’s overall security strategy. The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) recently received additional funding in the American Rescue Plan, proving that now is the time to focus on the public sector's investment in modernizing high priority systems, cybersecurity, public-facing digital services, and cross-government collaboration/scalable services.
Identity is the focal point of every digital transformation, and can help the public sector navigate emerging changes and trends; it’s essential to providing a seamless experience for citizens, students, partners, educators, and workers across the nation.
Every public sector organization needs Okta, and we’re excited to be hosting numerous sessions featuring leaders from defense, federal, state and local governments, as well as campus heroes.
Here is a quick preview of what you can expect at next week’s event. Admission is free, and don’t forget to register here.
- Wanda Jones-Heath, Principal Cyber Advisor & CISO of the Air Force, will headline the Opening Keynote on Securing our Networks.
- State of Iowa’s Darwin Ten Haken, Enterprise Architect, Office of the CIO, and Steve Kinney, COO, Application Development Division Administrator will discuss how they have successfully modernized Iowa’s legacy systems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The breakout sessions will feature speaker sessions on Federal Identity Credentials and Access Management (FICAM) from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Fraud Mitigation from Kansas Dept. of Labor, and partnering for campus success with Coast Colleges with Ellucian.
- Okta’s Director of Technology Strategy Sami Laine will host Quint Van Deman, Principal, Office of the CISO at AWS for a fireside chat on the importance of cloud identity and security.
- LTC Pete Godbey, Army User Engagement Officer within the Cloud Computing Program Office at DISA will join Gary Winkler, President of American Cyber, to discuss Cloud Access & Identity Management for Warfighters.
- Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT)’s Acting Secretary & CIO Jennifer Ricker, and DoIT CISO Adam Ford are headlining the Modernizing Citizen Engagement session to share how they’ve successfully leveraged cloud identity to transform citizen services.
- Our Zero Trust session will include Greg Hall from the Department of Justice, Gerald Caron, CIO, Office of the Inspector General, Health and Human Services and State of Delaware CISO Solomon Adote, sharing the importance of the Zero Trust security model within their organizations.
Constituents have grown to expect convenient and reliable online services and public sector organizations are increasingly looking to the cloud to find ways to strengthen security while improving digital services. But to do so properly — creating a trustworthy, user-friendly, and frictionless experience for the end customer — these services must have identity management and cybersecurity ingrained into their DNA.
I'm super excited to be joined by such luminaries and thought leaders in our government, and in our industry. I'm sure I'll learn a lot and suspect you will too. We look forward to having you join us at the Age of Identity Public Sector Forum on Thursday, June 3rd. Register to reserve your spot today.
