Education, AI and the Team Sport of Compliance

Despite the cloudy weather, he says the enthusiasm and curiosity around identity security and AI have made it a standout gathering.

“I’ve loved the turnout that we’ve had here,” Lee said. “Everybody’s passionate, excited about identity… and it’s nice to see the diversity of clients and customers that we have here.”

The double-edged sword of AI and data sprawl

AI’s potential excites Lee, but he’s also clear-eyed about its risks. “I think that the biggest risk with AI is just really around the sprawl and the connection of data,” he said. “The frightening thing about it, but also the cool thing, is that you get connected to massive amounts of data. The more data you give AI, the more things you can do with it… But if you had bad data controls or bad data classification before, that didn’t go away. It just bubbles it up that much quicker.”

Lee stresses that the fundamentals of access and visibility remain paramount. “If you don’t have that visibility of understanding who had that access, and now all of a sudden you put AI in there… those issues are going to get exacerbated.”

Turning compliance into collaboration

For Lee, the key to navigating change, especially in compliance, is education and inclusion. “By embracing it and making sure that you’re communicating both with your user base, your business base, and your leadership… we invite them to use it with us,” he said. “It’s not ‘you must comply.’ It’s ‘we’re all doing this together.’ It’s like a team sport.”

He likens it to a “Jedi mind trick of compliance,” and making governance collaborative rather than restrictive. “If you make it a team sport and educate and bring everybody into it, it’s a much better way of rolling that out across the organisation.”

Looking ahead

Lee expects rapid progress. “We’re going to see a continued acceleration of AI adoption, especially in identity security,” he said. “People are using AI tools, developing AI agents… and we’re going to see rapid adoption of vendor tools to help security practitioners roll out these programs and keep up with the business.”