2022 - Year in Review

It’s that time of year when we all pause to reflect on events in our lives, personal and professional. As I look back on 2022, there are some notable highlights:

In-Person Conferences Returned! Our IDPro membership met up at events including Idenitiverse, RSAC, EIC, Authenticate, Oktane, Ping YOUniverse, Gartner IAM, and many more. Many of our members presented Sessions and Master Classes at these events covering industry trends, deep technical knowledge, and even soft skills we all need to master to advance our careers.
IDPro continues to grow for both individual and corporate memberships. If you’re an individual member, why not ask your leadership about becoming a corporate member so the rest of your team can realize the benefits of an IDPro membership. (I did with my new company!)
Many of us started new positions, myself included. There are plenty of opportunities out there for IAM folks looking for something new. This is still a fairly small (but growing!) industry. I personally find it amazing to continually run into people from earlier parts of my career in new positions or companies when attending conferences.
This past year, we had over 35 new CIDPRO certifications awarded. I’ve been seeing CIDPRO listed on a growing number of LinkedIn profiles. I’ve also seen CIDPRO certification listed in job requirements. The exam itself provides broad coverage of foundational knowledge for an I&AM professional, and it’s a great mix of questions spanning our Body of Knowledge (BoK). If you’re preparing to take the exam, plan on spending some quality time reviewing the BoK beforehand. This is an exam for which you need to prepare!
Speaking of the BoK, we just released Issue 10! See Heather Flanagan’s Editor’s Note for full details of our new and recently reviewed articles.
Breaches occurred far too often throughout the year. Many of these were avoidable. Some of these were caused by not using MFA with services hosting intellectual property, leaving access keys hard coded in publicly available repositories, or improperly securing APIs. We need to do better!
The IDPro Slack channels continue to be a wealth of information, advice, humor, camaraderie, and education. And a source of newsletter article ideas. If you’re not already familiar with our Slack space, check it out today! If you have a question, your fellow IDPros will usually have an answer for you in short order.

As we look toward 2023, I hope our members will include a resolution to write at least one article for the IDPro Blog site and Newsletter! Seriously, your membership gives you a great path to share your thoughts and ideas with your fellow IAM practitioners. What are you waiting for?

On behalf of the entire Editorial Committee, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year for 2023!