Ad Schuurkes has a broad educational background. After initially pursuing a teaching degree and studying Dutch for a while, he ultimately became a certified maintenance engineer in Commercial Economics. Ad then completed International Business Administration at Nyenrode Business University (IMBA). After completing his Commercial Economics degree, Ad started working in IT as a Commercial Manager. In 1996, while working for McAfee Netherlands, Ad met Darryl, who also joined McAfee. Their work encompassed Europe and the Middle East, and thus began a very fruitful and friendly collaboration, which, after a break of several years, resumed in 2005. At that time, Ad was working for a security system integrator, and Darryl for Trusted-ID. In 2007, Darryl and Ad officially joined forces under Trusted-ID.
“Honestly, I didn’t want anything to do with IT until I was 35.”
At the companies where Ad worked, he was involved in commercial policy. Ad wasn’t always fond of IT: “To be honest, I didn’t care for IT at all until I was 35.” A passionate IT instructor taught Ad the connections that can be made in IT and that the reach and depth can be much greater, even internationally: “that’s where my passion lay.” “What really intrigues me about Identity & Access Governance is that we help organizations develop a ‘spider’ in their web, which enables all those connections and that reach, even beyond organizational boundaries! That’s a daily challenge for our team, and the appreciation of our customers gives us the most satisfaction.”
Access policies that can consume organizational change
“IAM has taken off enormously and is a relatively unknown phenomenon. Initially, it was simply called Identity Management (IDM). The field has since become one of the cornerstones and thus forms the heart of any good security policy. It has evolved into what is now called Identity Governance & Administration, which means a fully integrated access policy based on identities and accountability to all stakeholders.” Privacy in general is a major issue these days, and Ad is also concerned about it: “In light of current threats, no organization can function without a coherent access policy, constant and real-time monitoring, and accountability.”
Trusted-ID has over 10 years of experience in Identity & Access Management and we can help any organization, no matter how large or complex:
- to map out its processes,
- to establish a future-proof access policy and
- take charge of the end-to-end implementation.
Ad doesn’t just get satisfaction from completing a project. He wants to have met a client’s expectations: “That’s not always easy because every organization operates differently and sometimes hasn’t yet reached the maturity level needed to formulate a sound access policy.”
Identity & Access Management is never truly finished: “That’s because an organization is essentially a living, ever-changing organism. The ultimate goal should be an access policy that can absorb and consume organizational changes with relative ease,” says Ad. “Our clients are generally large, complex, and chronically changing organizations, for which a good access policy is absolutely essential, not least to ensure the continuity of the business.” This doesn’t mean, of course, that smaller organizations don’t benefit from a good access policy. The Cloud makes it possible for smaller organizations to implement a reliable and cost-efficient access policy.
Together, we are much more than the sum of our parts.
In the early years of Trusted-ID, we primarily ran successful projects within the central government. Now, Trusted-ID is also a significant player in healthcare and the financial sector. Ad: “I attribute our success to the culture we’ve cultivated together over the past ten years. We don’t know everything, but together we devise solutions for every problem, no matter how complex.” Most of the team has been working together for over five years. Several have been with Trusted-ID for ten years, almost as long as Trusted-ID’s founder, Darryl. Ad’s vision for the future: “We like to be seen as the absolute experts in the comprehensive field of Identity Governance & Administration, for organizations large and small, operating locally or globally. That’s what we live for.”