Moving from the front row to the field
09 December, 2016
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Digital ID, Financial, Government, Smart Cards
It was 1999 when I was assigned my first story about smart cards. An Army base was issuing them to new recruits for stored value cards so they could make purchases around the base.
This was all new to me — I had been a police and court reporter – but had just started as an editorial assistant at a publishing company that has changed named four times in the past two decades. In this role I was picking up assignments, as needed on everything from smart cards to e-commerce software and payment systems.
A couple of years later I was assigned a story exploring difference between minutia and pattern-based fingerprint algorithms. This began my interest in biometrics and other identity technologies and eventually the launch of the now defunct IDNewswire in 2002. I spent more than four years covering U.S. identity projects – including the creation of FIPS 201 and the passing of the REAL ID Act – and watched an industry emerge and begin to grow.
After a brief stint in health care IT, I came back to identity in 2008 managing the editorial team at SecureIDNews and re:ID. It’s been a fun ride watching all these identity projects mature and grow and observing from the front row.
But now it’s time to make another change — stop watching and start getting my hands dirty and join the action on the field. I am leaving Avisian to join Deloitte’s Federal Cyber Risk Services in December.
I am grateful to still being involved in an industry that I have called home for a dozen years. But instead of being an outsider, I look forward to working on these projects from the inside and trying to solve some of the problems facing digital identity initiatives.
The last nine-years at Avisian have been great and I trust my team will keep up the great work delivering important ID and security content to our readers around the globe.
Keep in touch. You’ll find me tweeting @IdentityZack.