Kyle Parris
Director of Product Management
nuBridges
From time to time COMMON 2009 conference attendees swing by the nuBridges booth just to “get their passport stamped” or to grab a goodie. They politely suffer through me probing them a little about their business, before I tell them what nuBridges has to offer.
I’d say around six times out of 10 they say “oh, we don’t need to protect our data,” or “we don’t store sensitive data,” or “we only have two people who can access the important stuff,” or (my favorite) “we handle access control and hashing ourselves.”
The best part of user group conferences like COMMON is seeing people’s faces light up the moment they realize: “Wow. . . maybe I do need to protect my data with a product like this!” “I thought it was way too complicated – too costly.” Those “aha” moments are becoming more frequent. And that’s a good thing. Because the employees, customers and other stakeholders who entrust these companies with their personally identifiable information (social security numbers, credit card data, etc.) assume that data protection measures are in place. At all times, whether that sensitive data is being used for a transaction or stored for analysis at a later time.
What we’re finding at this year’s conference is that many of these COMMON patrons leave with a new appreciation for data protection, and hopefully have nuBridges on their mind when they raise these issues back at the office. Some even get excited about the “kudos” they’re expecting to receive by bringing this important topic to the attention of their superiors.
Would love to hear about your “aha” moments at COMMON 2009!
Greetings from Reno,
Kyle
