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Saviynt CTO Jim Routh’s 29-year career in the tech space wasn’t what he expected at first. A history major in undergrad, Routh turned to tech as a way to get his foot in the door for the role he really wanted: being an entrepreneur.
“I was a jack of all trades doing all bunches of different stuff for an office product company,” Routh told IT Brew. “One of the customers was an IT security consulting company, and they offered me a job.”
Beginnings. He took to it and found a career path. Despite not having experience in computer science, he could tell that the future was in tech. While working for American Express, Routh began getting certified in security, eventually becoming the company’s first CISO in 2003. From there he went to other firms, including JP Morgan Chase, Aetna, and MassMutual.
“I got more interested in it and ended up going to school and taking a bunch of classes…at that time security was not a really well established discipline in a large enterprise,” Routh told IT Brew.
Identification station. Today, Routh’s focus is on identity access management. His role at Saviynt, a cloud identity security management platform, came after being a customer of the company. Routh told IT Brew that identity access management “grows pretty much at the same scale of the business” because the more identity clearance that is needed the more of a role those in charge of granting access will take. Enter data science—in order to streamline the identity process and establish and implement controls.
“Identity, instead of being just the provider provisioning the service of access, is evolving into much more of a core central nervous system for the cybersecurity organization to recognize that when behavior changes that can trigger automated workflow to manage risk in real time,” Routh said.
Routh, nearly 30 years into his career, still sees a lot of potential in the digital identity space. He told IT Brew that identity is “becoming more core to the cybersecurity function overall” and a good place to be to build a career. Routh developed into a cybersecurity executive after jumping on innovative technologies, he said, and that’s what the identity space is today.
“This kind of transformative work has always appealed to me, and it appeals to me today just as much as it ever has,” Routh said.