Gartner Expert

Sean ONeill

Sr Director Analyst

Sean ONeill is a Senior Director Analyst in the Technology and Service Provider (TSP) division of Gartner, researching emerging technology and trends (ETT) for product leaders (Tech CEO's, General Managers, Chief Product Officers, Product Managers, and Product Marketers). His areas of expertise and research are in Identity Governance, Identity Management, and Access Management. He has experience on both commercial and government (GPS) sectors both on Enterprise and CIAM identity deployments.

Sean has extensive (over 30 years) industry experience in the Identity Governance and Access Management Space. He has both enterprise and start up experience, Commercial and Government experience (background clearance complete), and worked on both the vendor and customer sides. Past employers have included EY, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Persistent Systems, and Deloitte.

Recent focus has been on CIAM identity backbone implementations for state governments as they go online with services due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At Deloitte, he also supported several strategic growth opportunities in the Cyber Security space focused on GPS clients as they migrate from brick-and-mortar mainframe services to online cloud-based delivery. This has led to a focus on digital credentialing and citizen self-sovereignty of their PII.

Sean is co-inventor on four US patents on wireless pen-based computer systems for trading floors and has authored several thought leadership pieces around Citizen Identity Management.

Previous experience

Worked mainly on migration of state identity services from on-prem mainframe identity and access management to cloud-based citizen single sign-ons for access to government agencies and services. These websites handle hundreds of billions of dollars for millions of citizens. And with the pandemic, they have become targets of massive identity fraud. While at Deloitte, also contributed to internal strategic identity projects and was a co-developer and facilitator of Deloitte University's Identity Boot Camps. Just prior to the pandemic, acted as interim Identity manager for a client hospital in Philadelphia as it upgraded it hospital systems to more modern digital services.

Professional background

Deloitte & Touche, LLP Advisory

Specialist Leader - Cyber Risk and Security

Oracle Corporation

Master Principal - Identity and Security

Sun Microsystems

Master Principal - Identity and Security

Areas of coverage

Identity and Access Management and Fraud Detection

Cyber Risk

Identity and Access Management for Technical Professionals

Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact on Products and Services

Cybersecurity Leadership

Education

Bachelor of Science Mechanical Engineering - Duke University Pratt School of Engineering

Completed coursework for undergraduate MBA from Duke University Trinity School of Arts and Science. Trinity does not award degrees to engineering students. Dean's list.

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Top Issues That I Help Clients Address

1Emerging trends and technology mainly around Identity Governance and Access Management

2Government public sector (state focused) identity and access management

3Incorporating Identity Proofing into overall fraud approach

4Focus on credentialing and user self-sovereignty,

5Eliminating passwords with risk/trust security approaches, dynamic user identity journeys