Latest / Identity at the Center / #362 - Identiverse 2025 - Diane Vicezar, DIAF Kim Cameron Award Winner

Transcript

#362 - Identiverse 2025 - Diane Vicezar, DIAF Kim Cameron Award Winner · Identity at the Center

• 0:04
  This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity at the
• 0:11
  Center podcast. I'm Jeff, and that's Jim.
• 0:12
  Hey Cowboy. Hey, you threw me off there.
• 0:15
  How are you doing, Jeff? You are ready for the standard
• 0:17
  response. I was, I was like.
• 0:20
  OK, so tell me about the get up because you I thought.
• 0:22
  We're going to be in Nashville and we're here in Vegas.
• 0:25
  Yeah, we're definitely in Vegas. You've got the hat.
• 0:28
  What you can't see on camera is you've got the belt buckle and
• 0:30
  the boots, like the whole thing. You just got done doing a panel,
• 0:33
  which you were excellent at by the way.
• 0:35
  Thank you, thank you. I did very risky things so I
• 0:38
  bought this online and which is not risky in itself, but I threw
• 0:43
  it in my luggage and never tried it on until this morning and I
• 0:47
  thought to myself as I was ironing it A1 suggested fit.
• 0:52
  That's something that just occurred to you as you're it.
• 0:54
  It really, truly, honestly did OK, but you've groomed me for a
• 0:57
  while, so don't make surprise. Almost 10 years, yes.
• 1:01
  So yeah, we're here at Identiverse.
• 1:03
  Been a great week so far. So I think anything highlighting
• 1:07
  so far. I mean, you know, it's, it's the
• 1:10
  same thing as usual in terms of it's about the people.
• 1:14
  It's always about the people, people, you know, people you're
• 1:18
  meeting for the first time. And the impact that this podcast
• 1:22
  that we started recording in Microsoft team like 6 years ago
• 1:27
  with all the echoes and, you know, the background, whatever
• 1:30
  it was and, and no video is now kind of like a part of people's
• 1:36
  lives and. Unfortunately for some, maybe
• 1:40
  it's being forced upon them. Children live in cars.
• 1:43
  You need to listen to this while their dad or mom takes them to
• 1:46
  school or whatever Maybe. Sorry, sorry for those kids.
• 1:51
  They might be listening out. But yeah, I think people say
• 1:55
  thank you for doing this. And I don't know how people
• 1:59
  understand how much like that. That feels really good.
• 2:03
  Yeah. I.
• 2:04
  Definitely appreciate when people come up.
• 2:05
  So, yeah, so keep doing that, keep us motivated to keep doing
• 2:10
  shows. And yeah, why don't we get to
• 2:13
  our guests today? Because this has almost become a
• 2:15
  little of a tradition for us, where we have some award winners
• 2:18
  from the Digital Identity Advancement Foundation.
• 2:22
  I'm stumble there for a second. And so why don't we go ahead and
• 2:24
  reduce our two guests today? First up, we've got Diana Visar.
• 2:28
  Visar hopefully pronounce that correctly.
• 2:29
  She's the Kim Cameron Award winner for this year.
• 2:33
  And then Aaron Crowe, who's been with us before, she's the
• 2:35
  director of governance and Transparency, Digital Identity
• 2:38
  Advancement Foundation. So welcome to both of you,
• 2:40
  ladies. Thank you for joining us.
• 2:41
  Thanks for coming us. OK.
• 2:42
  So again, we got to speak up. We're on a wild conference
• 2:45
  floor. So I want to make sure that
• 2:47
  people can hear this. Erin, I want to start with you.
• 2:50
  Set the stage for us. Tell us a little about the
• 2:52
  Digital Identity Advancement Foundation or Die off, this is
• 2:55
  kind of a referred to. And then tell us a little about
• 2:57
  the Kim Cameron Award and kind of how this got there.
• 3:00
  Yeah. So Diaph is an organization that
• 3:02
  was founded about a year and a half ago with the mission of
• 3:05
  making development as an identity professional more
• 3:08
  accessible and more possible for more people.
• 3:12
  This community is absolutely fantastic in terms of how
• 3:14
  welcoming it is. You were just talking about one
• 3:17
  thing that stays the same as an observation across the years as
• 3:19
  the people. I absolutely agree with that
• 3:21
  observation, but it can be really tricky to find that
• 3:24
  community in the 1st place and actually get to connect with
• 3:27
  people if you don't have a large employer, for example, that will
• 3:30
  sponsor you to come to events like this to get development
• 3:33
  opportunities to speak or to go review all the great sessions
• 3:36
  that are here and all those other things.
• 3:38
  So one of the core missions of DIAF is to support that
• 3:42
  development in the form of financial awards that we give to
• 3:48
  merit based applications from awardees like Dana.
• 3:52
  We have two different award programs currently.
• 3:55
  One is the Kim Cameron Award that you mentioned earlier.
• 3:57
  We have 5 total awardees this year for the Kim Cameron Award
• 4:00
  who are going to different events like EIC, like here at
• 4:03
  Identiverse Authenticate. And that award focuses
• 4:07
  explicitly on people that are new to their identity career.
• 4:10
  It doesn't mean maybe that they're like fresh out of
• 4:12
  college or anything like that. Maybe they're having a career
• 4:14
  pivot or something from another discipline into identity or
• 4:17
  security. So it's focused really on that
• 4:20
  kind of like newer cohort. And then the Victoria, the
• 4:23
  Victoria Vittucci Award is a little bit different in that it
• 4:26
  focuses more on people who are established in their careers and
• 4:30
  doing really good work, but need help getting access to say
• 4:33
  standards events. For example, if they are working
• 4:36
  on Skim or if they are working on Fido other, any other
• 4:40
  standard that we work with basically to make sure that
• 4:42
  they're really valuable contributions can continue
• 4:44
  without having to worry about them having a financial barrier
• 4:47
  in the way. So it's a really excellent
• 4:49
  program. What's what's really cool is
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  last year we had Grace Coupeeon and she was fantastic.
• 4:54
  And then it wasn't a one time thing.
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  So Jim and I just got back from EIC in Berlin and I was sitting
• 5:00
  there, we're in the, you know, keynote, whatever.
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  And I walk out and then Jim says to me and say, hey, Grace was
• 5:06
  sitting like 2 rows behind us and I totally like scooped over
• 5:08
  her. I said, well, I felt really bad.
• 5:09
  So I went back in, waited for like the keynote to be done.
• 5:11
  And I said, hey, Grace, good to see you again because she, like,
• 5:14
  you know, made that that that facial recognition is like, oh,
• 5:16
  yeah, we like, we know each other.
• 5:17
  Like, where do I know her from? And I was like, totally missed
• 5:20
  it. So what's cool is she's here as
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  well. And so Diana, this is your first
• 5:26
  time coming to Identiverse. Tell me about the award.
• 5:29
  What's your experience has been? And you know what is?
• 5:33
  What has it been like? Yeah, no, it's been fantastic.
• 5:36
  This is, as you said, my first time at Identiverse and I am
• 5:39
  definitely extremely excited to be here to meet such amazing
• 5:42
  community. Definitely, you know, an honour
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  for me to be a part of the DIF community and to be the Kim
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  Cameron we're recipient this year.
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  You know, just to to honour all the legacy of Kim Cameron, of
• 5:54
  course, and to be able to share and to learn from the expertise
• 5:58
  of the amazing people that I've been able to meet here.
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  Definitely, you know, an amazing opportunity that I wouldn't have
• 6:05
  had if it wasn't for the foundation.
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  They believe in my potential. They, you know, of course were
• 6:10
  very interested in what I wanted to learn here at Event verse.
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  I definitely was not expecting, but as I get selected, we were
• 6:19
  just talking about this before. I was like, wow, you know, I'm
• 6:23
  so early in my career, you know, it's within my first year in
• 6:27
  identity. I joined Microsoft last year as
• 6:31
  a full time employee. Before that, I was an injured.
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  And that's where I first, you know, learn about identity and,
• 6:35
  you know, just the impact that it has, you know, in technology
• 6:38
  and in society. And I was like, I definitely
• 6:40
  want to be a part of this. So to be able to be here and,
• 6:44
  you know, share these experience with professionals from all
• 6:47
  levels of experience from like usually all over the world.
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  Like I've met people from like Europe and Asia here and I'm
• 6:54
  like, wow, like this is definitely the opportunity to
• 6:58
  feel like you can actually connect in person with, you
• 7:01
  know, the, the, the, the amazing people that I've been able to
• 7:06
  read their work about to see on social media, Maybe maybe people
• 7:11
  that I follow on LinkedIn that I'm super like excited to talk
• 7:14
  to you. Like I've seen them around.
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  I'm like, wow, this is the place to be if you want to talk about
• 7:19
  identity. So super great for, for the
• 7:21
  opportunity and excited to learn more and be back next year.
• 7:24
  Hopefully, hopefully this is the first of many years.
• 7:27
  Deanna, I love the energy that he's bringing to this.
• 7:30
  The Kim Kameron Award is special to be the Victoria Vertucci
• 7:34
  Award. You couldn't have picked two
• 7:36
  people that have had a bigger impact on this industry.
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  And for me personally, so 2006 was my first identity
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  conference. It was Digital ID world, which
• 7:48
  doesn't even exist anymore. But Kim was up there reading the
• 7:52
  Laws of Identity for the first, first time that for for me to be
• 7:56
  exposed to it and the whole crowd was like into it and like,
• 8:01
  it's such a great legacy for him.
• 8:03
  I think, you know, most those are two people who were taken
• 8:06
  too early from us. I think we all hope to kind of
• 8:09
  like stayed off into the sunset and like, you know, 90 years old
• 8:13
  passed away. But these are people who passed
• 8:14
  away ahead of their time. The other one, Detorio Bertucci,
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  I mean, to me, he was just like, first a friend, right?
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  But second off, he's just such an impactful person in the
• 8:25
  industry. First off, he was so
• 8:27
  recognizable because of his hair.
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  But the second off, you know, it was interesting.
• 8:32
  Jeff and I did the The Safety Talk podcast the other day and
• 8:37
  he said, you know, you guys were basically the first identity and
• 8:40
  access manager of podcasts. And I said, no, actually ours
• 8:44
  was around the same time that Victoria was doing it.
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  So we were kind of at the, you know, the same moment in
• 8:50
  podcasting. And you know, what I think is
• 8:53
  also great about that was we never looked at each other as
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  competitors, like, oh, we have to, we have to get more views or
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  anything like that. It was all about, you know, this
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  community and this community is, in my opinion, like just
• 9:08
  embedded by what DIAF is doing. DIAF, I've personally given my
• 9:14
  money to it because I think it's a worthy cause to get folks like
• 9:19
  yourself into this environment and start setting up that next
• 9:23
  level of leadership. So I do hope you're back next
• 9:26
  year. You know, Grace has, like Jeff
• 9:29
  mentioned, is now a part of the community and it's like that's
• 9:33
  the we got. You we're not letting you go.
• 9:36
  Yeah. Yeah, but it takes some effort
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  on your part, right? You have to keep, you know,
• 9:41
  putting into the community, right, Because it's all of our
• 9:45
  responsibility. And pay it forward, including
• 9:47
  yours now. Yeah, yeah.
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  And I love what you were saying, you know, like that sense of
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  community and so important to have early and career folks as
• 9:54
  well here. And that's why that's what one
• 9:56
  of the things I really like about Nayef and the Kim Cameron,
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  the word that they're giving opportunities to early and
• 10:01
  career folks that wouldn't have the opportunity to be here
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  otherwise. So I think that and you know the
• 10:05
  work that they are doing, I hope this is just the beginning of
• 10:08
  many, many years of success and many, many early and career
• 10:11
  folks that will be able to be here thanks to to the
• 10:15
  opportunity that they are giving.
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  So yeah. So how did you get into
• 10:20
  Identity? Did you choose it or did it
• 10:23
  choose you? I think it chose me.
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  You know, when I was in college, I did a couple of internships.
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  One of my internships was at Microsoft Security, and the team
• 10:34
  that I was part of was identity protection.
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  And that's when I first, you know, came across this, you
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  know, big, big industry, you know, identity.
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  And I just, you know, imagine me junior in college, it was
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  literally the first time that I had the opportunity to learn and
• 10:51
  work on something related to that.
• 10:53
  And I was just very excited to, you know, meet with customers
• 10:56
  and hear about the impact that the products we were building
• 10:59
  had in their in their lives and, you know, in their work.
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  And when I finished college, it was like, I want to continue
• 11:04
  doing this. I want to learn, I want to learn
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  from the best. I want to learn from this
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  community. So in some ways he chose me, but
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  I also am choosing it every day. You know, and I think I see
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  many, many early career folks, like I have friends who are in
• 11:18
  college, friends who are in grad school that they are getting
• 11:21
  more interested in like cybersecurity.
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  And I'm like, we need to have more opportunities where college
• 11:26
  students can get a chance to learn, can get internship
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  opportunities, you know, full time job opportunities, like
• 11:33
  opportunities to go to conferences like this.
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  So, yeah, I definitely tell my friends, OK, look into this.
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  This is a great potential, great impact in the world.
• 11:43
  And we need more, more folks, you know, coming out of college
• 11:46
  and grad school to join. What do you think needs to
• 11:49
  happen for more people to become more interested in choosing
• 11:54
  identity? Because this question of how did
• 11:56
  you get into identity is something we've been asking for
• 11:58
  six years now. Wow.
• 12:00
  And 99% of the people who have been on this show have said it
• 12:04
  chose me. Yeah.
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  And it's going to be a while until that number, you know,
• 12:09
  gets lower. We want people to choose
• 12:10
  identity. What do you think the identity
• 12:13
  industry needs to do to attract, you know, newer people into the
• 12:18
  industry? And it doesn't necessarily have
• 12:19
  to mean that it's their first job.
• 12:20
  Could be they're making a career change or whatever it may be.
• 12:23
  But what are your thoughts on, you know, how do we approach,
• 12:26
  you know, the younger generations coming out of school
• 12:29
  and just making it more attractive as something that
• 12:32
  people want to pick versus kind of just falling into it by
• 12:35
  accident, which I think all of us did?
• 12:37
  No, I also ask everyone this question, you know, how do you
• 12:41
  first get involved with this? And a lot of people told me, you
• 12:44
  know, it was my first job or it was my internship, Very like few
• 12:47
  people that I've talked to tell me I learned about it in school.
• 12:51
  And so that means that we need to put more, you know, effort on
• 12:56
  reaching out to like colleges and universities and maybe even
• 12:59
  high schools to, you know, like tell them about, you know, hey,
• 13:03
  this is what we do. This is the impact you can have.
• 13:07
  I have a friend who is in college right now and she
• 13:10
  learned about identity. She learned about cybersecurity
• 13:13
  through one of the clubs in her school.
• 13:15
  So someone who works at a company came to her school and
• 13:19
  made a talk. And I think that is actually
• 13:21
  important thing, like if we all had the, the chance and take the
• 13:25
  time out of our days to go and speak to, you know, like college
• 13:29
  students or grad students and tell them about our experiences,
• 13:33
  right? You know, like the more
• 13:34
  experience you have, the more, you know, this new generation
• 13:37
  can, you know, learn. So I always, you know, try to
• 13:40
  tell my colleagues like, hey, you know, like, do you do any
• 13:42
  type of like military work, like go and do talks for like your
• 13:46
  alma mater, like other schools or high schools?
• 13:49
  I think that is such a good way because that's where we see, oh,
• 13:53
  you know, like this is what they're doing and they are like
• 13:55
  successful and they are making this much impact.
• 13:57
  I want to be a part of that too, you know, like you can connect.
• 14:00
  It's, it's easier if you can actually see and talk to someone
• 14:04
  that is already in that place. Like, I just think that
• 14:07
  representation is really important.
• 14:10
  And if you can see it, like, let's say, like, if I go to my
• 14:13
  school, you know, I'm going to talk about my work, right?
• 14:15
  And so maybe if someone is interested, they can ask me more
• 14:18
  about my experience and they can learn that it's possible.
• 14:20
  Like, for example, I am from Paraguay, I moved to the states
• 14:24
  for college and I wouldn't have learned about this if I was
• 14:27
  still a part where I'm pretty sure about that.
• 14:29
  But now I talk to people from my country and I told them, hey,
• 14:33
  you should look into this. You know, like if you're
• 14:35
  studying in the US, for example, like try to like take like, I
• 14:38
  don't know, online courses or try to talk to folks who are in
• 14:41
  the industry. You know, there are so many ways
• 14:43
  to learn now, but if as as professionals can go and talk to
• 14:48
  them, meet them where they are, I think that's going to make a
• 14:51
  huge difference. Yeah, Jeff and I work our day
• 14:54
  job is where security consultants for a company called
• 14:57
  the RSM. And one of my roles within the
• 15:00
  company is around education and training.
• 15:05
  And so we've we've got a program to train young people, college
• 15:10
  students in El Salvador. And so there's many different
• 15:15
  tracks within cyber that penetration testing, for
• 15:19
  example, was one that like 100 people wanted to be in.
• 15:23
  And at first we had like 10 people register for digital
• 15:27
  identity. And I was really disappointed.
• 15:30
  But the the fact of the matter is, is not being taught in the
• 15:33
  colleges. People didn't even know what it
• 15:35
  was right Then we start, they started realizing, oh, oh, this
• 15:39
  sucks is something I can build a career in.
• 15:42
  People got in that track and I think that it's hugely
• 15:46
  successful. If people were very happy that
• 15:49
  they spent the time learning this rather than, you know,
• 15:53
  everybody crammed me into one thing on pen testing.
• 15:56
  But I, I think in in colleges something like pen testing is
• 16:00
  that's a big part of the focus, right?
• 16:02
  Yeah, yeah. And then one more thing, if I
• 16:05
  can add to that, is social media.
• 16:08
  I see more and more people sharing about their journeys on
• 16:11
  LinkedIn, for example. And I was telling before, like
• 16:14
  many of the people that I met here today, I followed them on
• 16:17
  maintain or I followed their content on YouTube.
• 16:20
  And I'm like, wow, like that's, you know, to be able to connect
• 16:24
  with folks in that way that that's sort of interesting.
• 16:27
  So I, I also think that, you know, like the power of social
• 16:29
  media, like being able to share those stories, for example, and
• 16:33
  like inspire your colleagues to do something similar.
• 16:36
  I think it's very important because what you were saying,
• 16:38
  you know, like maybe they didn't know about digital identity
• 16:40
  before, but now they've read your article on LinkedIn or they
• 16:43
  watch your video on YouTube, like they listen to this
• 16:45
  podcast. Now they know a little bit more.
• 16:48
  So, you know, taking that first step, I think it's also very
• 16:50
  interesting. Karen, you've got to have
• 16:52
  thoughts on this. I mean.
• 16:53
  I do. Yeah, I was going.
• 16:54
  To say I think one of the. Things that we would also
• 16:56
  benefit from is reframing the conversation around identity a
• 16:59
  little bit and how we talk about it with new people.
• 17:02
  Because I think you were talking about inspiration.
• 17:04
  I think there's a real opportunity to find more people
• 17:06
  who are very mission driven. Because if you think about the
• 17:09
  identity impact and what that means for people's everyday
• 17:12
  lives, right? What it means to keep our banks,
• 17:15
  our hospitals secure, any other number of really crucial
• 17:18
  applications. That's a really inspiring kind
• 17:21
  of purpose to get behind. And I think that often times
• 17:24
  when we talk about identity, a lot of us are are big geeks.
• 17:27
  We get really focused on the tech material we're really
• 17:29
  excited about. But there are people, of course,
• 17:32
  that choose their profession because they want to go help
• 17:34
  people, nurses, doctors, everything like that.
• 17:36
  I think if we can reframe the way that we talk about identity
• 17:40
  to be more about the mission behind identity, we can also get
• 17:42
  people really to move behind that as well.
• 17:45
  That's an interesting point because I think there's so many
• 17:47
  different motivations, right, for people to choose a career.
• 17:50
  You know, I think a lot of people maybe saw the movie
• 17:52
  Hackers, you know, however many years it was decades right ago.
• 17:55
  I was like, oh, that looks cool, right?
• 17:56
  I'm going to be in cyberspace. And it does not look at all like
• 17:59
  that in the real world, right? And then the Matrix, right?
• 18:02
  And things like that. And it has like almost like this
• 18:04
  kind of allure of mystique of, oh, I'm a hacker.
• 18:08
  I don't know if identity has that, but it's absolutely
• 18:11
  foundational to any of those things.
• 18:13
  And one of the things I think about from like a career
• 18:15
  progression for a lot of folks is people got into security and
• 18:19
  they, I think they see identity sometimes as a stepping stone to
• 18:23
  something else. How do we refrain that
• 18:26
  discussion to say, Oh no, identity is not the stepping
• 18:29
  stone. Identity is the destination and
• 18:31
  all the other information that you get from a cybersecurity,
• 18:34
  you know, education, networking and security principles,
• 18:38
  policies, standards, right, all that stuff.
• 18:40
  Those are all things that are absolutely transferable to make
• 18:44
  you a really good identity person.
• 18:46
  The same way really good identity skills can make you a
• 18:49
  really good, you know, risk person or compliance or you
• 18:53
  know, general information security or things like that.
• 18:56
  What is the what is the thing that we need to get out there?
• 18:59
  And this is an open question of, you know, I want both of your
• 19:02
  opinions on it to try to find what are those trigger points,
• 19:06
  because not everyone is going to be sold on the mission of I want
• 19:08
  to help people. That's just the way people are.
• 19:10
  I want to make a ton of money and I want to retire when I'm
• 19:12
  30, right? I don't know if I did anything
• 19:14
  question, but we all want that, right?
• 19:16
  Exactly too. And maybe there's roles like
• 19:18
  that. And maybe that role is maybe
• 19:19
  more like on a product side, you find a problem and you develop a
• 19:22
  solution that, yeah, makes you a ton of money and affords you the
• 19:26
  opportunity to either start something new or pivot somewhere
• 19:29
  else. Or maybe it isn't.
• 19:30
  It's like, hey, we talk a lot of of of I do, at least I am
• 19:34
  heroes. A lot of organizations run on a
• 19:37
  strategy of Iowa heroism. And the only way that
• 19:40
  organization actually works in the real world is because you
• 19:43
  have a bunch of heroes that are actually doing the things behind
• 19:46
  the scenes to help keep their company secure.
• 19:48
  What is what is it that we need to do to reframe that
• 19:52
  discussion, you know, around those two different kind of
• 19:54
  options of helping people and making money and can you do both
• 19:58
  and have financial security and have options to expand and grow?
• 20:03
  You know, is, is there a ceiling to being an identity
• 20:06
  professional? We talked with Ian a long time
• 20:08
  ago, right, about chief identity officer, the Cheeto, as I like
• 20:11
  to call it, that doesn't seem to have taken off except for maybe
• 20:15
  very specific use cases. I'm curious, how do you see, you
• 20:19
  know, the maturation of a person going through a career in
• 20:22
  identity? Where?
• 20:24
  What is the ceiling right now? Where can it be?
• 20:28
  I don't know if there is necessarily.
• 20:29
  A That was a very long question. I apologize, but there's so much
• 20:32
  to get there. There were a couple of different
• 20:33
  parts to it, right? It's like the first part that
• 20:35
  you asked was like, where's the ceiling?
• 20:36
  And I would say, I don't actually think that there is a
• 20:38
  ceiling. It might just be that we don't
• 20:39
  recognize it for what it is, because I think you see identity
• 20:43
  in so many different parts of today's organization.
• 20:46
  Sometimes you see it embedded within the information security
• 20:48
  organizations, which means that their ceiling, so to speak,
• 20:51
  could be SIZZO. Sometimes you see it embedded in
• 20:54
  other types of like platform organizations and AWS, for
• 20:56
  example, where I have my day job, it's part of the platform
• 21:00
  system. So I think that, you know, you
• 21:03
  have the same kind of career growth into those executive
• 21:06
  ladders, if that's what you want, or the like, very highly
• 21:10
  ranked individual contributor positions, but they filter into
• 21:12
  different parts of the organization.
• 21:14
  So we don't think about it in terms of like, oh, the chief
• 21:16
  identity officer, for example. The other thing that you were
• 21:19
  asking about is like, how do we actually make the jobs more
• 21:22
  attractive to people, right? And I think that Dana said
• 21:24
  something as well, talking about getting more into the university
• 21:27
  space and getting people earlier in the funnel, like what career
• 21:32
  fairs or other types of events? Like do we have any kind of
• 21:34
  targeted presence? And for identity, like do we as
• 21:38
  representatives of our companies do enough to make sure that not
• 21:40
  only are the cybersecurity positions being elevated when we
• 21:43
  go and have conversations with the universities with the
• 21:45
  identity positions as well and highlighting how complementary a
• 21:48
  lot of those jobs and skills are?
• 21:50
  So I think it's probably a pretty multi pronged problem to
• 21:53
  raise the profile so to speak of identity, but there's so many
• 21:57
  different avenues that we have in our connected community that
• 21:59
  we could use for that. Does that do peripheries work?
• 22:03
  And I, and, and forgive my ignorance because I didn't
• 22:05
  actually go to college, so I have no experience whatsoever in
• 22:09
  going through that process of a four year degree.
• 22:13
  And then I don't know, do career people go to career fairs and
• 22:16
  try to find jobs and things like that?
• 22:18
  I does. I am having representation at
• 22:21
  that help. And I guess you're probably the
• 22:22
  closest one to it right now. I have to mention it does, but I
• 22:26
  just, I have no point of reference for that because my
• 22:27
  path and identity was through bartending at a help desk,
• 22:31
  right? What are your thoughts on him?
• 22:34
  Yeah. So during the four years I was
• 22:37
  in college, I attended, you know, multiple career fairs,
• 22:41
  like different industries. And I never really saw, I never
• 22:45
  really saw, you know, like someone talking about identity,
• 22:49
  right? And maybe it's just because my
• 22:52
  my college didn't invite those organizations or companies, but
• 22:57
  IA 100% agree that they should definitely be there, right?
• 23:00
  And I think that again, going back to, you know, like
• 23:03
  consistently and proactively, you know, like reaching out to
• 23:06
  like universities and, and, and colleges and like other schools,
• 23:10
  you know, like, or, you know, any other spaces where people
• 23:13
  are trying to learn about this. And I definitely think that
• 23:17
  career first would help, especially because you get the
• 23:20
  chance to talk one-on-one with someone represented that
• 23:22
  organization or company. And that really, you know, like
• 23:26
  opens the conversation and opens the floor for people to ask the
• 23:30
  type of questions. And maybe they cannot ask online
• 23:32
  or maybe they haven't really had a chance to talk to or ask to
• 23:36
  someone who actually is part of that industry.
• 23:39
  So I am hopeful. I am very positive and like very
• 23:43
  optimistic that career first would help.
• 23:46
  Ma'am, so if you could go back, what do you think you would
• 23:49
  change, if anything, to get where you are right now?
• 23:52
  Is there anything that you think back and say, oh, I wish I kind
• 23:54
  of had done this differently because I'm sure there's a lot
• 23:55
  of people listening who are, you know, just like you getting into
• 23:58
  identity and going through this, this process.
• 24:01
  What, what is your advice to them who maybe are, you know,
• 24:05
  either just looking into getting into school or maybe halfway
• 24:07
  through or whatever it is, like what would you have done
• 24:10
  differently or maybe nothing, I don't know.
• 24:13
  What do you think? I would have loved to, like,
• 24:15
  start a club. Start a club is like, start a
• 24:18
  conversation, get some support from faculty, get some support
• 24:22
  from my school, you know, to create awareness, to inspire
• 24:25
  people to get into this. And I think a big part of that,
• 24:28
  I wish that I had learned about this when I was in high school.
• 24:31
  You know, like right now my sister is in high school since
• 24:33
  she's about to graduate and she's learning right now about
• 24:37
  this. I'm like, you need to look into
• 24:38
  this. Go and tell your classmates.
• 24:39
  Like go and tell your friends because I wish that I had the
• 24:42
  chance to like create a club and start a conversation when I was
• 24:45
  in school. So if anyone who is in school
• 24:47
  right now is watching, listening, please do that.
• 24:50
  You know, like if you're interested in this, you should
• 24:53
  also open the door for other people, other people to learn.
• 24:55
  So. Do you consider yourself more of
• 24:59
  a business focus, a technical focus or is it just kind of, or
• 25:06
  do those boundaries not define you?
• 25:09
  I guess like, are you more interested in technology or the
• 25:13
  business to buy in what what's striking your, you know, your
• 25:17
  interest rate now? Yeah, so right now, because I'm
• 25:20
  still, you know, early in career, I'm trying to let to
• 25:22
  learn a little bit of everything, right.
• 25:24
  But in the future, I would like to focus on like more like the
• 25:27
  technology side. Actually, you know, I attended
• 25:30
  some pretty cool sessions yesterday where people were
• 25:33
  talking about thinking about identity from different
• 25:36
  perspectives and like different areas, right.
• 25:39
  So for example, I have a cognitive science degree, which,
• 25:41
  you know, it's a very interdisciplinary, you know,
• 25:44
  major already. And you know, just to get to
• 25:47
  listen to folks yesterday talking about, you know, the
• 25:50
  identity from like the perspective of, yes, business,
• 25:53
  technology, but also like society in general, right?
• 25:57
  So how does identity affect or impact society?
• 26:00
  And so at this point in my career, I think that because I'm
• 26:02
  still, you know, very early, I'm trying to learn about all those
• 26:05
  different perspectives and then try to like focus on one or two
• 26:08
  where I think I can make the most impact.
• 26:11
  That's. Great answer Erin.
• 26:13
  Thoughts. For myself, am I more tech or
• 26:16
  business focused? No, no, no in terms of that
• 26:19
  answer. Yeah.
• 26:20
  No, I think it's really identity is very interdisciplinary.
• 26:24
  So I think that there's a lot of opportunity to kind of shape
• 26:27
  from early career on like where your interests lie.
• 26:30
  And I know that like for me personally, that interest
• 26:31
  changed a lot and evolved as I was getting through my career.
• 26:35
  I mean, I didn't personally set out to go into identity either.
• 26:38
  It was very much accidental because I started in the call
• 26:40
  center at Amazon taking calls as a seasonal agent many, many
• 26:44
  years ago. And I think that I first
• 26:46
  probably got into it with the interests of gaining like what
• 26:49
  are the experiences and skills that I can use to segue into
• 26:51
  another career. I thought that I was going to be
• 26:53
  going more into the business of it, but the technology is
• 26:55
  actually really appealing and I think draws you in as well.
• 26:59
  There's a lot of complexity, there's a lot of opportunities.
• 27:01
  So I think it'll be interesting to see kind of how the patterns
• 27:03
  shift and change like as you continue down there for your
• 27:06
  path. Yeah, 100%.
• 27:07
  Dionne I'm interested to know that I'm closer to the end of my
• 27:11
  career, much closer than the beginning.
• 27:14
  You're in the beginning of your career and you have this AI
• 27:18
  cloud that's out there and people are saying, oh, it's
• 27:20
  going to make all of us useless or we're not going to be needed.
• 27:27
  Do you see it like that or what's your outlook when it
• 27:29
  comes to AI? No, that's a that's a really
• 27:33
  good question. I think we're still very early
• 27:35
  in the days of AI, right? I'm, I'm excited to see what
• 27:38
  happens in the next couple of years.
• 27:40
  Like here, like I went to a bunch of talks about, you know,
• 27:43
  identity and AI and so it's definitely, you know, like
• 27:46
  present in the in the industry now.
• 27:50
  But from what I can tell you personally, you know, like I, I
• 27:53
  want to see what's coming in the next few years and, you know,
• 27:56
  seeing how it's going to, you know, impact, reshape, maybe the
• 27:59
  industry and how we can use these tools, you know, to, to
• 28:02
  accelerate our work and, you know, to, to become even more
• 28:05
  efficient to make even bigger impact.
• 28:07
  So we'll see. We'll see MCP.
• 28:11
  Yeah, nobody. Said MCP.
• 28:14
  Yeah, which I feel is like a bingo card for identity right
• 28:17
  now. So I I have heard it a couple
• 28:19
  times, yeah, but I have not attended many sessions.
• 28:22
  So maybe I just felt unlucky or lucky depending on they want to
• 28:25
  look at it. Oh, I meant on this podcast.
• 28:26
  No one has said MCP for sure this week.
• 28:28
  We've heard it, Yeah. Can I get a question though?
• 28:31
  Yeah, since we already got into like the topic of sessions, what
• 28:35
  has been or what? Like what session are you most
• 28:37
  excited about this week? Or what session you obtained it
• 28:40
  so far that you thought, wow, this is very interesting.
• 28:43
  Great question. You want to go first or me?
• 28:45
  Sure. I mean, I haven't been that that
• 28:47
  many sessions, but the session that Jeff moderated was one of
• 28:53
  the top two that I've. Isn't that a ringing attendance?
• 28:58
  Isn't that a ringing endorsement?
• 28:59
  But it was. I mean, where everything's going
• 29:02
  with the shirt signal stream work and Kate, to me that's on
• 29:09
  one hand it's incremental and driven over what we're doing.
• 29:11
  On the other hand, it could revolutionize what we're doing
• 29:14
  in terms of how we provide identity security to our
• 29:18
  organization. So it actually could be the, you
• 29:22
  know, we talked about IAM 10 years ago as IGA access
• 29:27
  management, privilege access management.
• 29:29
  Now that landscape and that definition is so much more and
• 29:32
  the signal framework is to me going to, it's not going to be
• 29:36
  one of the things that gets talked about this year and dies
• 29:39
  off next year. I think next year gets talked
• 29:42
  about even more and more and more.
• 29:45
  So I, I rarely attend sessions. I'm usually sitting here like
• 29:49
  this having a conversation or some hallways.
• 29:52
  I went to two sessions. One I moderated the one that Jim
• 29:55
  talked about and the other one was the one he moderated.
• 29:57
  Just refer to here. So for me, it's not so much
• 30:00
  about the sessions, it's about the hallway conversations.
• 30:02
  I get to meet a lot of new people and you know, people are
• 30:06
  just getting into the space. So shout out to be like Negozi,
• 30:09
  who I met and kind of walked her around and introduced people,
• 30:11
  people like you were me for the first time.
• 30:14
  I had a really good conversation with Andrew Cameron last night
• 30:16
  at the bar, you know, on AI and identity and EVs.
• 30:20
  So for me, when I come to a conference like this, data is
• 30:23
  really about the hallway conversations.
• 30:25
  And I prioritize those only because I know I can go back and
• 30:28
  watch the video replay of the other things.
• 30:30
  So I felt bad because Andy came to our thing last night and we
• 30:33
  were talking. He's like, hey, hey, what'd you
• 30:35
  think of my keynotes? Like, yeah, I'm going to watch
• 30:37
  it later, you know, sorry, but that's for me, it's it's this,
• 30:42
  this is organic. It's those things that happen in
• 30:45
  the hallways. You can't do this later.
• 30:47
  You can't do it later. It's it's something that just
• 30:49
  comes up and it's like, hey, Diana, how you doing?
• 30:51
  What do you think? Blah, blah, blah.
• 30:52
  Right. Hey, you want to go grab a drink
• 30:53
  or let's get dinner or whatever maybe.
• 30:54
  Or hey, she said about this and you know, Aaron, we're going to
• 30:59
  have the DIA forward winner right on the show.
• 31:00
  Like what's that look like? What this next?
• 31:02
  Things like that. So for me, that's that's what I
• 31:04
  get out of a conference like this.
• 31:05
  Aaron, what do you think? Yeah.
• 31:07
  I, I focus a lot on the people too when I come to this at this
• 31:10
  point. But I have attended a couple
• 31:12
  sessions and I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff
• 31:14
  going on with Fido right now on a couple of different fronts, as
• 31:17
  well as the companies that are really at the forefront of
• 31:20
  putting out pass keys. So there were a couple sessions
• 31:23
  earlier in the week that dove into what's new in the world of
• 31:27
  pass keys when we have syncopal pass keys, like kind of what
• 31:29
  does it mean from an implementation standpoint?
• 31:31
  How does this differ in terms of the security guarantees that we
• 31:34
  had previously from hardware found pass keys and also what
• 31:40
  does the intersection look like with verifiable credentials?
• 31:42
  That's a big question that's on people's lips is like why do I
• 31:44
  need one or both when I have either.
• 31:48
  The other stuff that's going on within Fighter 2 is kind of talk
• 31:51
  within some of the groups that are developing better
• 31:53
  technologies. Like Google Christian Brand had
• 31:55
  an interesting conversation about some of the additional
• 31:57
  signals that we can use to get context around who is actually
• 32:01
  providing my who is actually doing my authentication, who's
• 32:04
  the user behind the device, which is something that is
• 32:07
  changed in its model a little bit since the introduction of
• 32:10
  syncopal pass cues. So I'm a fighter freak.
• 32:13
  I've got my VVQ earrings on. So of course, like I like the
• 32:15
  fighter sessions, but that's what I found really interesting
• 32:18
  this week. All right, turn it back on you,
• 32:20
  Diana. What was your favorite?
• 32:21
  I mean. And we'll have to exclude the
• 32:23
  podcast, obviously, because you. Know first of.
• 32:25
  All outside of that, what was your favorite?
• 32:27
  That's not one Yesterday, actually.
• 32:30
  Diet Elizabeth Grace, Alex Minor.
• 32:33
  They were on a on the panel talking about identity on
• 32:36
  defense. So it was very interesting to
• 32:38
  hear about, you know, like different perspectives on the
• 32:40
  topic. And another one that I really
• 32:42
  liked was a keynote yesterday about building world class
• 32:45
  teams. I thought that I was like really
• 32:48
  cool in the way that, you know, like the the speaker frame net
• 32:50
  and you know, for for for identity.
• 32:52
  I thought it was very interesting.
• 32:54
  And, you know, you can see how those like skills that you learn
• 32:59
  in like different areas, you can also apply them to identity.
• 33:02
  And so like for people who are trying to pivot to identity, for
• 33:04
  example, you know, I think that that keynote was very, very
• 33:08
  interesting. So yeah.
• 33:10
  If there's one thing I've learned in identity, it's you
• 33:12
  have to be ready to change and learn something new because no
• 33:15
  one is an expert on everything and there's always something new
• 33:18
  to learn, right? A couple years ago it was, I
• 33:20
  hate to say it, but the B word blockchain.
• 33:22
  And then it was zero trust. And then it was AI and there
• 33:26
  will be something that comes up and verify credentials is going
• 33:29
  to be huge, I think, and things like that.
• 33:30
  So, you know, my tip for anybody who's in this space is, you
• 33:35
  know, get comfortable being uncomfortable because you're
• 33:37
  never going to cut everything. It's great to be, you know, in a
• 33:39
  specific niche and be an expert, but there's always something new
• 33:42
  to learn, which is just crazy to think about it.
• 33:45
  We've been doing this podcast for six years like 360 ish
• 33:49
  episodes one per. Day for the whole year.
• 33:53
  Yeah, basically, and it's how did we come up with that many
• 33:56
  episodes? Like whenever we started this,
• 33:58
  it was like, oh, we'll run out of content after like 40 or 50
• 34:01
  and here we are. There's just always something
• 34:04
  new, interesting conversations to have.
• 34:05
  So I really appreciate you guys being on here.
• 34:07
  I want to close things out on a lighter note.
• 34:09
  We typically would do, there were a couple options on here.
• 34:12
  In the interest of time, I'm going to pick the one that is
• 34:14
  probably the one that we're most famous for is if you were a
• 34:18
  potato, how would you like to be prepared?
• 34:22
  And I won't be silently judging you based on your answer.
• 34:25
  Just you will. Who wants it would be a
• 34:29
  sacrificial. Always very excited about
• 34:30
  potatoes. I'm ready for this one.
• 34:32
  I would be potato skins of course with like a nice side of
• 34:35
  sour frame and bacon. Okay.
• 34:37
  All right, that's good. No idea.
• 34:39
  You don't? No idea.
• 34:40
  So much potato. Are you not a potato fan?
• 34:44
  Not really. OK, So you would not be a potato
• 34:47
  is your is how you'd be prepared.
• 34:48
  You'd be anything else other than a potato.
• 34:50
  Yeah, I would answer. That's fine.
• 34:51
  Yeah. This is a question we asked from
• 34:52
  time to time, just kind of I see it as a little of a psychology
• 34:55
  test because I've seen patterns of answers over the years.
• 34:59
  And Jim? Always based on what's the least
• 35:02
  painful way to die which. Is a very gym thing.
• 35:07
  I mean, I'm thinking about the future.
• 35:08
  Right, Well, you're thinking about the lack of a future and
• 35:11
  the the. Yeah, right, exactly.
• 35:13
  The compost bile, right? It was just a fading to
• 35:17
  oblivion, right? But I do like potato skins with
• 35:22
  lots of bacon and lots of cheese.
• 35:24
  Let's make it as unhealthy as possible.
• 35:27
  Oh yeah, I mean, they're potato skins, so.
• 35:29
  I mean, yeah. OK, so I and and I'm usually
• 35:33
  like the potatoes au gratin. Something like that cheesy
• 35:35
  potato, whatever, maybe, but the groups of answers are typically
• 35:38
  the pain related 1. So what is the least painful way
• 35:42
  that I'm going to die as a potato?
• 35:45
  You and I answered this Aaron and the what do we like as
• 35:48
  potatoes that's delicious to enjoy.
• 35:51
  New answer is I don't think I've ever heard anyone say I don't
• 35:54
  really want to be a potato, which again, completely valid.
• 35:56
  So this is always a learning experience for us.
• 35:58
  The other one is more of a nourishing thing.
• 36:00
  So I think I asked my wife this a while back and she said, well,
• 36:03
  I'd want to be planted in the ground and become more potatoes.
• 36:07
  I was like, well, that's a great answer.
• 36:09
  And I feel like a journey for saying because I got and so
• 36:11
  thanks. So I, you know, just something
• 36:14
  that we grant from time to time and occasional ask our guests.
• 36:18
  Stupid things. Like.
• 36:21
  That, that's awesome. OK, so we're going to wrap it up
• 36:23
  for this week. Thanks everyone for watching or
• 36:25
  listening. I'm going to have links in our
• 36:27
  show notes for both of you guys to connect on LinkedIn.
• 36:29
  Hopefully people reach out and we'll have a link for Digital
• 36:32
  Identity Advancement Foundation as well, so people can
• 36:35
  contribute to that and help get people like Diana and Grace and
• 36:39
  Jen and others that we've met to come out to conferences like
• 36:42
  this. And we hope you'll come back and
• 36:44
  maybe share your experiences after you've been in this space
• 36:47
  for a while. We've got you.
• 36:49
  The hooks are in. We will not let you go unless
• 36:51
  you watch me let go. And then of course, we will of
• 36:53
  course, let you go. Well, we hope that it doesn't
• 36:55
  happen. That's it for us.
• 36:57
  So again, thanks everyone for watching and or listening and
• 37:00
  we'll talk with you all in the next one.
• 37:04
  You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
• 37:07
  We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
• 37:11
  review, and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
• 37:15
  website at identity@thecenter.com.
• 37:19
  See you next time on Identity at the Center.