Burton Group identity/privacy expert jumping to security firm

Identity and privacy expert Gerry Gebel is leaving the Burton Group to take a position leading security firm Axiomatics's expansion into the U.S. market.

Gebel, who is spend 10 years at Burton Group and now has the title of vice president and service director for identity and privacy strategy, will begin his new job March 1.

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The analyst firm known for its in-depth technical reports and IT analysis was recently bought by Gartner for $56 million. Gebel said his negotiations to join Axiomatics took place before Gartner made its purchase of Burton and his decision to leave was not prompted by the sale.

Axiomatics is known for its work with the Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), which is a policy language and a processing model for interpreting that language. XACML is a standard approved by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Version 3 was introduced last year.

Gebel is known in the industry for leading interoperability events involving companies implementing standards for such tasks as federation and entitlement management. He is also an expert around access control and XACML.

At Axiomatics, he will be in charge of establishing everything from business development to product strategy and managing partners. He says growth in the U.S. operations won't happen in a flash, but will progress steadily over time. The company says on its Web site that is the "provider of the world's largest XACML deployments in various market segments throughout the world."

The company has an XACML-based policy server with policy auditing features and a range of products in its development pipeline, according to Gebel.

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