Don Schmidt

Don Schmidt is a Principal Program Manager in the Windows Azure Active Directory engineering team at Microsoft with over 30 years of successful software and standards development experience in security, federated identity and attribute-based access control. He is considered a trusted advisor by numerous corporate, government and military customers. 

Don currently leads a project for cloud-based Customer and Partner Identity Management that will enable low-friction, safe and trustworthy access for “external users” to an organization’s online applications whether they run in the cloud or on-premises. This Windows Azure AD service addresses both security and privacy requirements by combining Bring-your-own-identity, Verified Attributes, Step-up Authentication and U-Prove Privacy capabilities.

Previously at Microsoft Don has been the Lead PM for a succession of Windows OS security capabilities, including Authentication Mechanism Assurance, AD Federation Services 1.0, Kerberos Constrained Delegation and AD Cross-forest Trust.