Latest / Identity at the Center / #333- Navigating Identity in the Automotive Industry with Andrew Cameron

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#333- Navigating Identity in the Automotive Industry with Andrew Cameron · Identity at the Center

0:00
Every second that when you hit that button on the app to say
0:02
start my vehicle, unlock my door, call for help, right,
0:06
Whatever it may be. That is all mission critical
0:09
things where you cannot have identity be the slowest link in
0:12
the chain. How do you tackle speed when it
0:15
comes to make it secure but make it fast?
0:19
Yeah, that's, that's part of the process of bringing things to
0:21
production to make sure that you have the, the performance, the
0:27
response, the, the, the, the least latency involved when
0:31
making. So there's in all of the best
0:35
practices that need to be brought to bear when it comes to
0:38
edge computing, right? To be able to make calls to an
0:41
API services layer that can respond and, and recognize that
0:46
a a user is authenticated and have authenticated with MFA and
0:50
that we can process this request versus yeah, this doesn't look
0:54
right. Let's reject the request.
0:57
Let's cancel this session because they've been
0:58
compromised, right? We get a threat signal that says
1:00
that the user may be compromised, right.
1:02
So those are things that have to be taken into account.
1:05
But yeah, at our scale and, and to be able to have a response
1:11
time when you start your vehicle of a couple of seconds is, is
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something that is AI think it's the highest level of of
1:17
distributed system engineering at our level that to be able to
1:20
get that done. And it's there's a lot involved.
1:23
Like you just said, there's, there's so many systems, so many
1:26
interactions that happen that the customer never sees right,
1:29
but that we have to get involved with to make sure there's
1:33
policies that get touched, that get triggered so many points
1:37
along the way. This is identity at the center.
1:46
If it has anything to do with IAM, this is the go to podcast
1:53
now your hosts Jim McDonald and Jeff Steadman.
2:03
Welcome to the Identical Center podcast.
2:04
I'm Jeff, and that's Jim. Hey, Jim.
2:06
Hey, Jeff, how are you? Oh, not so bad yourself.
2:10
Good guess what I'm thinking about but.
2:13
Yeah, I mean. Wrong.
2:14
Wrong. This is a safer word podcast, so
2:16
I don't know what what are you thinking about?
2:20
Well, I was thinking about ID Pro.
2:22
I was on, you know, I was in the Slack channel and it's just so
2:27
full of treasures. So I was just scrolling through
2:31
the general post and Hannah Souter had a post out there that
2:34
was about demonstration of proof of possession.
2:39
I'd never really write up on that.
2:41
And someone posted an article that broke it down into like the
2:45
one O 1 level. And I was like this.
2:48
This is why I'm a member of ID Pro.
2:51
And I would encourage anybody who's listening to this podcast
2:53
through you found the wrong podcast or you should be a
2:58
member of ID Pro. Yeah, it's worth the I think
3:02
it's, I think it's 150 bucks and it is well worth it just for the
3:06
Slack channels alone. But you get so much more with it
3:09
too, right? You get access to a bunch of
3:10
resources and just cool people, nice people, friendly people.
3:14
This is why I like the identity space.
3:15
But yeah, big fan of ID Pro. There's also, I think it got
3:19
posted maybe in the last couple days or so, there are some board
3:23
positions open up. So for people who aren't aware,
3:26
that's something, if they're interested in giving back, there
3:28
is, I'm not sure how many one, maybe 2 board spots open, but go
3:33
check out the ID Pro website if that's something you're
3:35
interested. And then of course ID Pro has a
3:37
big presence of things like Identifer and and so forth.
3:40
Yeah, I mean, they're they're dedicated to the education
3:43
within the industry. I would also say it's like, you
3:46
know, Hannah made that post. She's a very advanced identity
3:50
practitioner. Anybody sitting out there
3:53
listening is like, yeah, I, I don't even know what that is.
3:56
And feeling intimidated. You could be a total beginner
4:01
first year or two in the industry and post a question.
4:03
Nobody's going to judge you negatively.
4:05
You can be a total expert and I do just not have had the
4:09
experience on that. That's fine too.
4:11
Yeah, yeah. I found myself posting questions
4:13
sometimes the I wonder if people are going to think this is a
4:16
dumb question, but I shouldn't have that thought because I
4:21
don't think people look at it that way.
4:24
They're excited. People are excited if they have
4:26
an opportunity to kind of give back and respond to some of
4:28
those questions. Yeah.
4:30
I mean, look, yeah, This is why I got into consulting was when I
4:33
was in, you know, the real world of I am.
4:35
You really only know what you work on, and the opportunity to
4:38
get into other areas that your organization doesn't do is
4:43
generally not going to happen. So there are lots of people who
4:46
are focused, like, for example, IGA, privilege, access
4:49
management. Maybe they're just a funnication
4:50
they work at just in Microsoft, right?
4:52
There's so much to learn, so much to know.
4:54
You will never know at all. Jim, you and I have been doing
4:56
this for what, 2025 years each. Our guests have been doing it
5:00
for a long time. There's just too much to learn
5:03
at any, you know, at a very expert level.
5:05
It's very difficult to do. Plus, there's always something
5:08
new coming up. I mean, remember when self
5:12
sovereign identity was like the thing that was going to change
5:14
the world? Still waiting for it, you know,
5:16
a couple years later, but there's always something new
5:18
coming up. Now you've got AI that's going
5:20
to change things. So ask the questions, go
5:22
research it, and you'll find that ID Pro Select Channel is an
5:26
awesome place to get answers. How do you prove Slack channel
5:29
and then this podcast, because a lot of times when you brought up
5:31
the that that topic, we a lot of times get guests on, you know,
5:37
say David Motti or something and he'll talk about something like
5:41
machine identities. It's like, yeah, nobody's
5:43
talking about that. Two years later, it's like
5:45
everybody's talking about machine identities and not human
5:49
identities. And so, you know, we keep
5:53
pushing ourselves, like, all right, let's bring a guest on
5:55
who's going to talk about something that we don't know a
5:58
whole lot about, but we're good at asking questions.
6:01
Yeah, I mean, you can explain that to to us, to dummies,
6:04
hopefully other people who are way smarter than us and pick it
6:06
up over audio or video from a podcast standpoint.
6:10
Exactly. You know another great source
6:13
here. Here's my tricky lead.
6:14
And another great source for learning is conferences.
6:18
We happen to have discount codes galore.
6:21
Yeah, that that was a pro Segway, I got to say.
6:24
So yeah, conferences, we've got a bunch of them.
6:27
The one that is coming up next is going to be London, the
6:30
Gartner I am Summit there. So that's March 24th and 25th.
6:33
If you use the code IDAC 425, that will save you 425.
6:38
I think we settled on EUR 425 of some currency off of that.
6:44
But that's a great one to go with time, especially, you know,
6:47
for for folks that are maybe in the London area or maybe Europe
6:49
at large. We won't be there, but we will
6:52
probably be at the one later this year in the USI have to
6:55
imagine we've kind of gone for the last several years, but they
6:57
were nice enough to extend that. So we're passing along.
7:00
And you don't have to remember any of these.
7:02
They'll always be on our website.
7:03
If you go to idacpodcast.com and just Scroll down, you'll see all
7:07
the different conference discounts that we've got or any
7:10
other things we have going on. I kind of fight there real
7:12
easily. So there's that one and then the
7:15
one you and I are pretty excited about.
7:17
Yeah, this is Berlin. I just booked my flight
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yesterday, or maybe it was the day before.
7:22
So May 6th to the 9th, It's in Berlin, it's the Cooper, your
7:26
coal, European identity and cloud conference.
7:29
If you use the code ID AC25 MKO you get 25% off.
7:34
So Jim, you and I are going to be there very excited.
7:36
All I have booked right now is a flight into Germany and a hotel.
7:41
I have not yet figured out what I'm going to do after that.
7:43
My wife and I are still kind of planning post Berlin but I'm
7:48
excited to be out there for the first time.
7:49
Never actually been in Germany other than the Frankfurt Airport
7:52
on my way to China. India so.
7:54
Yeah, and getting outside of the airport will be great.
7:57
Yes. Yes, I will.
7:58
And I'm going the week before, I'm going to be in Oslo the week
8:02
before and we're doing an identity beer and already have
8:07
at least four people signed up for that and hopefully that list
8:11
extends further. So if you're a practitioner
8:14
involved in identity in some way or at least interested enough to
8:18
listen to this podcast, and you can be in Oslo the week before
8:22
or live there, reach out to me on LinkedIn and love to get you
8:27
involved in that identity beer. Yeah, We haven't picked the
8:30
exact date yet. Those are all I, I have.
8:32
I don't think I've ever been to one.
8:33
But you'll be out there touring the countryside, beer identity,
8:36
beer in hand, I guess. I had a couple people reach out
8:39
to me on LinkedIn, you know, graciously being, you know,
8:41
offering to like show me around and things like that.
8:44
I don't know where I will end up yet.
8:46
So I apologize if I don't get back to everybody or if I don't
8:49
hit your city. There's just too much to do in
8:52
in one week that I have between Berlin and trying to trying to
8:55
get back to the US. So.
8:57
Hopefully this isn't the last time we go to.
9:00
No, I think hopefully we can turn this into an annual
9:03
pilgrimage or something, maybe for IDC to head out to to the
9:07
cooker. No conference after that's done,
9:11
vacation a little bit and then Las Vegas for Ideniverse, that
9:15
one is June 3rd to the 6th. Again, you and I are going to be
9:17
doing some stuff there. I don't think we're quite ready
9:19
to announce some of the fun things we've got lined up, but
9:23
we're still coordinating on how that exactly will work.
9:25
But it will be a very fun, another type of thing that we
9:32
have done in the past that we're excited to bring to Ideniverse.
9:34
I'll just leave it there. Probably not a probably not very
9:36
good. I, I, I probably didn't
9:39
obfuscate that enough. So people will be able to figure
9:42
that out. But June 3rd or 6th IDV 25-I D
9:47
AC2525 percent off and you'll be able to take advantage of that.
9:52
And that's, and that stacks up the discounts as well.
9:54
So you definitely want to take a look at that.
9:57
Yeah. So, Jeff, between those two
9:59
conferences, are you going to get any work done this summer?
10:03
I have to because I have clients so they're going to be expecting
10:06
work to get done. So yeah, I will be working
10:08
things in between editing, broadcasting, publishing,
10:13
working, all that good stuff. And hopefully I'll be able to
10:16
unplug a little bit and while I'm in Europe to to check out
10:18
the sites. Exactly.
10:21
Yeah, enjoy yourself a little bit for sure.
10:23
Yeah. The other thing that we wanted
10:24
to mention was we don't have the discount code for it yet, but
10:27
we've been going to the Fido Authenticate conference for I
10:31
don't know what is it in three or four years now in a row.
10:35
And we've been doing something there, will probably do
10:37
something again this year. We just haven't gotten that far
10:40
with our planning yet. The conferences in October, but
10:44
if you want to be a speaker, if you have an idea for a paper to
10:49
submit to present on that deadline's coming up.
10:54
March 3rd, 2025 is the deadline. Go to authenticatecon.com.
10:59
We can figure out the navigation then to submit a paper, and I
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would definitely recommend that. I think our discount code's
11:06
usually pretty good, but I don't think speakers have to pay to
11:11
get into the conference town. But if I say that and that's not
11:15
true. Andrew's probably like shaking
11:16
his fist at the at the radio right now.
11:18
Oh yeah, yeah, he's turn up the heart if you're listening and to
11:22
turn apart and stop listening to this.
11:25
So no. But if you're interested in
11:28
presenting our, that's the deadline.
11:32
OK, that's enough babbling from us again.
11:33
Check out the website that'll have the discount codes.
11:36
I'm excited to welcome our guests on.
11:39
He has been in the identity space for a very long time.
11:42
He is Andrew Cameron, he's a technical fellow in identity and
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access management at General Motors.
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And before we go any further, Andrew, I don't want to say hi
11:49
yet. I got to make a disclaimer,
11:51
right? These are your views.
11:53
The views expressed on this podcast by Andrew are his and
11:58
not General Motors. So we're going to make that very
12:01
clear. So I'm I'm going to swear you in
12:03
Andrew, do you agree? No, that's fine.
12:05
Yes, I agree 100%. Welcome officially Andrew to the
12:10
show. We're very excited to have you
12:11
here. Gentlemen, I am honored and
12:13
privileged. You can't be in the identity
12:15
industry and not know about this podcast, and so I'm excited to
12:18
be here. Well, we're happy to have you
12:20
here. People still discover it.
12:21
So you know that's it's always great when you have new
12:24
listeners and new guests on the show.
12:26
We have tradition. First time anyone comes on the
12:28
show, we ask them for their identity background.
12:30
You've been doing this for a long time, not to age you,
12:32
right, but you've been doing this for a long time.
12:34
Tell us something about how you got into the identity space.
12:37
Was it something that you chose or did it choose you?
12:42
I feel like it chose me. I started off in app dev, you
12:46
know, doing all of the early Microsoft development
12:49
technologies. And even in my early years at at
12:53
GM, I was a application architect that I was my primary
12:59
responsibility and one of my early roles was an, an architect
13:04
lead on the deployment of an, a, our employee portal, right?
13:08
So this is a pretty massive undertaking, you know, hundreds
13:11
of thousands employees. This is going to be the face of
13:15
of IT for our employee population, right?
13:18
And so there was a lot of effort that went into not only kind of
13:22
what was built around in the portal, but we also position
13:27
this portal to be in a way to access applications in
13:32
throughout the enterprise, right?
13:33
And so where most of the discussions ended up happening
13:38
was, well, how do we secure access to application A once
13:42
somebody logs into the portal, right?
13:44
And so that typically always involved LDAP directories,
13:51
access control list and all of those legacy ways of securing
13:55
things that we did back in the early 2000s.
13:58
And so I being involved in that so much, I ended up being on a
14:04
directory team, right? And so we were known as the LDAP
14:07
team and, and our big deal was to socialize SSO across the
14:12
enterprise, right? That was actually a thing in the
14:15
early days. And so that really kind of
14:18
kicked off my, my learnings around identity and I ended up
14:23
meeting, you know, all the luminaries that guys that have
14:26
been on this podcast previously. I mean, I remember we were
14:29
deploying a product called open SSO in the in the early years,
14:33
that was a sun product. And we had a trainer come in and
14:38
train us on, on how to deploy open SSO.
14:41
And that trainer was Alan Foster, right?
14:43
And that's, that's a guy that you guys had on not too long
14:45
ago. And, you know, those are
14:48
relationships that have endured over the past 20 years, right?
14:50
People, folks like Ian Glaser, somebody who's been on 100 times
14:54
on this podcast that have helped kind of guide me in terms of
15:00
being embraced in the community. And, and, and when things like
15:04
ID pro came along and there, you know, you guys promoted ID pro
15:07
and, and, and Jim's example is, is 100% accurate in terms of the
15:12
value. Because you know, it's typically
15:15
you don't have that kind of an engaged community to be able to
15:18
bring issues and topics to and be able to get that kind of rich
15:22
response, right. Typically, you know, out on the
15:24
Internet, you're just a dog, right?
15:26
So it, it's, it's really great to see how ID pro and the
15:32
community has grown in, in the years that since it's been
15:35
created. And you know, I've been
15:38
privileged to be part of it, privileged to be around this
15:41
community for so long because it's something that's it's
15:43
giving me a career, it's giving me a focus.
15:45
So you've been in this game for a while.
15:46
How many years do you or how many rings on the tree do you
15:51
want to claim as being an identity?
15:54
Yeah, 20 years this year actually.
15:58
So I don't know if there's any kind of celebration that I have
16:01
planned, but it's, it's really interesting to see how things
16:05
have evolved. Because when we were early on,
16:08
it was, you know, we were trying literally to go to other
16:12
organizations within GM just to get them to on board to our
16:17
enterprise LDAP environment, right?
16:19
Like we, we didn't even own Active Directory, right?
16:21
It was come to our enterprise LDAP environment and we can give
16:26
you single sign on, right? And then the amount of time that
16:29
went into debating things like password strength, it seems
16:33
silly now, right? We were, we're heading into
16:36
actually password list, right? We're, we're literally rolling
16:40
out password less capabilities today.
16:43
And so to think of how far we've come from a lot of the things
16:47
that started off that kind of was the foundation of the
16:49
identity and access management discipline.
16:53
You know, some things haven't changed as much as they need to.
16:54
I think IGA is somewhere that is, is kind of begging for some,
16:59
some innovation, I think, but there have been a lot of other
17:03
exciting areas. Customer identity is 1 area that
17:07
I've seen a lot of innovation and a lot of definition and then
17:12
that aspect of the market in recent years.
17:13
And so yeah, it, it's just, you know, 20 years in, still
17:17
passionate about it, still excited about it.
17:19
So we're we're really looking forward to it.
17:22
Is there something that you kind of look back and say that was a
17:25
game changer or identity? Is it something like, it could
17:28
be something as simple, I don't know if it's simple, but hey,
17:31
we've got standards now, SAML, Open ID Connect or you know,
17:34
whatever before that, or maybe it was the advent of single sign
17:37
on. Is there something that you
17:39
might in your mind that like jumps out?
17:40
It's like, oh, like that's that's it.
17:42
I think what really kicked the things off was the adoption of
17:46
standards. I think things early on like the
17:48
adoption of SAML and eventually O auth and Open ID connect.
17:52
Really, because that was, you know, most companies want to,
17:56
you know, align on that and then, you know, everyone
17:58
interacts with other companies in some way or another.
18:00
And that gave you a language, it gave you a protocol on how you
18:04
could allow external parties to come and authenticate to your
18:07
enterprise and give them access to things.
18:09
Right. And so we started really early
18:11
on in a partnership with Sun and Microsoft where we were evolving
18:17
the SAML standard early on. And then we just we promoted the
18:20
fact that we were part of the Liberty Alliance and then we
18:22
were, you know, promoting what, you know, making products from
18:26
Sun and Microsoft work. And this is in 2007, 2008,
18:29
right, where that kind of thing was relatively unheard of.
18:31
So, you know, those are things early on, I think the adoption
18:35
of standards and, and, and the fact that standards like SAML
18:38
and O auth and open ID connect have really endured, right?
18:41
And, and that's what's so exciting about things like pass
18:43
keys where, you know, that has gotten industry adoption at a
18:47
rate that that we haven't really seen before, right?
18:49
It seemed like it was probably a year or two where we started
18:53
hearing about Pass keys to everyone is supporting it, all
18:56
the big names are supporting it. And now you know, we're as
18:59
implementers, we're really trying to catch up to kind of
19:01
bring that feature set and to bring the all of the goodness of
19:04
what Pass keys are to our to our users and our customers.
19:09
So I know G miss, you know, obviously a very big company and
19:12
I've always been curious about this adoption of pass keys
19:13
because they feel like the groundwork was laid a couple
19:15
years ago. But just because it's like, hey,
19:18
we had this new thing. It takes time to adopt those
19:21
sorts of things and get them into plans, etcetera.
19:23
What was it that was like, OK, now is the time where GM is
19:27
looking at this and say, hey, let's do let's do passkeys.
19:30
What was the the key to that? A desire to get away from
19:33
passwords. Just an overall recognition.
19:37
We had adopted kind of 0 trust principles and practices
19:41
formally probably 3 years ago. And the desire to move the
19:46
authentication level to kind of raise the floor in terms of
19:50
authentication levels that we would be willing to accept to do
19:53
things like privilege operations is really, kind of really what
19:56
kick things off and be perfectly honest.
19:59
Pass keys prevents a user experience benefit that we
20:02
really haven't seen to this point, right?
20:05
So you're being able to move away from passwords to kind of
20:09
increase that? That base level of security when
20:12
we're accessing things within the enterprise and you make
20:15
everybody happy by not having to enter passwords, not having to
20:19
do, you know, less secure MFA steps as a second action to get
20:26
access to things really ends up being pretty much a, a, a win
20:31
overall. There's there's effort to get
20:33
there and there's a lot of kind of turning of the battleship
20:37
when you're dealing with enterprises of our size in order
20:39
to not only get users configured and set up correctly so they can
20:45
take advantage of the stronger authentication methods.
20:49
But there's a, there's a lot of cross boarding of applications
20:53
in a lot of situations to make sure that they're leveraging
20:55
modern authentication in order to take advantage of the single
20:59
sign on that comes with leveraging modern auth in the
21:02
cloud and things like that. So it's, it's not a turning of a
21:07
switch and just make everybody work.
21:09
There's a lot of internal, you know, collaboration that happens
21:13
across a whole lot of teams to be able to bring an enterprise
21:17
of our size, to be able to take advantage of password as
21:19
technologies. And it never moves as fast as,
21:23
you know, we in the identity space want it to move, right?
21:25
There's all. But this is the reality of
21:27
especially a larger enterprise where like you said, you know,
21:29
turning the battleship takes time, right?
21:30
Where or if you want to use a training or whatever analogy,
21:33
you're right of a big thing that needs to shift direction or
21:36
speed. It does take a lot of time and a
21:38
lot of planning too, because you're, you're dealing with, you
21:40
know, not just the technical aspect of it, but the change
21:44
management aspect of it from a business process perspective,
21:46
which can make or break how successful something like that
21:48
might be, right? No, and you have to prepare to
21:51
over communicate. You have to prepare to make sure
21:53
that you give all of the guidance necessary.
21:56
So you know, are you going to be force feeding some of these
21:59
changes or are you going to make them self-service, right?
22:02
Are you going to encourage people to go in and set up their
22:04
account to take advantage of password lists?
22:06
Those are decisions that have to be made pretty early on.
22:09
And over communicate is my highest recommendation.
22:13
And everything that we've done is that you don't want to make
22:16
people have to pick up a phone or call somebody or, or, you
22:19
know, fire up a, a slack session.
22:21
You want to make sure that they have all the information
22:24
available to them to be able to, to make the decisions needed to
22:27
get switched when they have to. And so, you know, the lessons
22:30
are learned, right? You, you on our side of it as
22:33
implementers, we're, we want to rush these changes in and say,
22:36
Hey, we won, we did it. And it's not quite that simple
22:40
in our size and scale. It's never that simple and it's
22:45
never right quick, right? And so it's a process, the
22:49
change management like you said is a huge aspect of it.
22:52
And yeah, I mean, we, we started we're, we're probably over a
22:57
year in to transitioning the, the enterprise completely.
23:01
And it involves users, apps, devices, data.
23:06
It's it's a full, full level transition.
23:10
I know there's so much we want to get to, but I got to ask what
23:13
is like been the common question maybe that you've gotten from
23:17
end users about this whole pass key, you know, password list
23:21
type of approach. Is there something that is out
23:22
there? Because I'm sure people out
23:23
there listening, it's like, all right, what should I be thinking
23:24
about from a deployment standpoint for this?
23:26
But has there been anything common that you've noticed?
23:30
Not, not quite yet. I think that the biggest
23:32
adoption that is still surprisingly that it's so much
23:36
of an adoption challenge is, you know, and typically in, in
23:41
enterprise platforms, there's the authenticator app, there's
23:44
the ability to use some password less mechanism to confirm an
23:49
authentication flow. And those are things that
23:52
people, you know, they typically think they wouldn't, they're
23:54
already either using their own, they want to bring in and use
23:57
or, you know, they're suspect about using it on a personal
24:03
device. And those are things that we
24:04
have to kind of coax through through policy and then making
24:07
sure that they're aware that there's no, no personal
24:10
information involved in, on those devices that you're
24:12
tapping a, a push notification is, is there's no private
24:16
information that goes that gets involved in that.
24:18
So those are kind of the main questions that we get when we
24:21
transition a lot of our activity to use in things like an
24:24
authenticator app. But the user experience benefits
24:26
are pretty significant. So they usually, once they get
24:29
used to that in their flow, they literally forget their password,
24:32
right? They literally haven't used it
24:34
in so long that they end up when, when they actually ever
24:37
get something that requires and they enter a password, they
24:39
forget it and have to end up resetting it.
24:41
So that's a good thing. And then and hopefully we'll get
24:44
to the point where they'll never need it.
24:45
Yeah, well, just write it down and just stick it on your
24:47
keyboard. That's the.
24:48
Same thing. So much work to get away from
24:52
that. But yeah, those were the days.
24:55
I introduced you as a technical fellow.
24:57
I don't think we've ever had a technical fellow on our show
25:01
before. What the heck does that even
25:03
mean? And was it?
25:04
What is the day-to-day like for a technical fellow?
25:07
Yeah. So I, when I complete like, like
25:11
when I sign up for a webinar and it'll ask for my title, I just
25:15
put identity guy because in, in my role and it is, it's pretty
25:21
much a, a technical specialist at an enterprise level.
25:25
And it kind of recognizes that I've been doing it for a while.
25:29
And so my role is, is pretty much to guide all things related
25:34
to implementing identity and access management technology,
25:38
right. And so whether it's on the
25:39
enterprise side, whether it's on the customer identity side, all
25:44
of the projects that we run throughout the enterprise, I'm
25:47
responsible for making sure that there is a level of quality in.
25:51
And then every integration point is, is doing what it should be
25:54
in that we're meeting the needs of our business stakeholders,
25:57
right? Those are things that typically,
26:00
you know, my whole engagement in getting into customer and ID and
26:02
access management started with a, a phone call.
26:06
It was like, hey, what do you guys know about customer
26:08
identity, right? Because they knew that we were,
26:10
at the time we were, we were primarily responsible for
26:13
enterprise identity, workforce identity.
26:15
And we really didn't own that part of the environment.
26:19
And it was a single phone call that got me involved to say,
26:24
let's see where we can help here.
26:25
And ended up with suggesting a product, implementing the
26:28
product and getting it deployed. And you know, there were by the
26:32
time we actually got it deployed, there were hundreds of
26:34
people involved. You know, 456 organizations
26:37
across the enterprise were involved in it ended up being a
26:40
really big deal and we actually did it over COVID while we were
26:44
actually realizing they were about to be shut down through
26:47
COVID as when when this deployment actually happened so
26:49
and. You're going to be at
26:51
Ideniverse, right? So I think we're going to be
26:54
maybe even on the same panel. I think our friend Sean is
26:57
putting something together. But give us a preview of what to
26:59
expect at ideniverse. So Sean and I are putting
27:03
together a continuous identity workshop.
27:05
So we're really excited to really get into some of the
27:08
futures of kind of where we think identity is headed.
27:11
And so there's a lot of activity and you guys were at the most
27:15
recent Gardner conference and I authenticate as well where
27:18
there's a, there was a, an interrupt that they hosted that
27:23
brought a lot of companies together who are supporting Cape
27:26
and the shared signals framework specification.
27:29
And there's just a lot of real benefit when it comes to being
27:35
able to be completely dynamic in terms of how we apply policy
27:39
around access control and being able to integrate multiple
27:42
security products is, is really a huge benefit over taking
27:46
advantage of the shared signals framework.
27:48
And so we're going to host a workshop that kind of gets folks
27:52
immersed in, in what's involved to be able to take advantage of
27:55
that. And so that's I, you know, I, he
27:59
didn't bring me along kicking and screaming.
28:01
You know, Sean is so excited about it.
28:02
You can't, you can't deny his enthusiasm around this topic.
28:06
So I'll just come along for the ride.
28:09
You know, Andrew, I figure with the technical fellow, it would
28:11
be like, who's who's this Andrew Cameron again?
28:14
Oh, he's the technical fellow down the down the hall there.
28:18
I hear that that's a, that's a piece of comedy gets thrown my
28:20
way once in a while. But yeah, yeah, I just, it's
28:24
easier to just talk about it as I'm the guy, I'm the identity
28:27
guy at GM. If there's something going on
28:28
with identity and access management at GM, probably I'm
28:31
aware of it. I'm definitely interested in
28:33
this customer. I am topic because I imagine
28:36
you've got a ton of complexity and I could probably, you know,
28:41
talk to your ear off for an hour or ask you question or all day
28:45
and ask you questions. So I picked a few that I think
28:48
that you can probably really speak to.
28:50
I would imagine that you guys have a pretty wide mix of legacy
28:56
systems, modern systems and everything in between.
29:00
And that changes over time, like the mix of technologies that
29:04
you're carrying on. You probably still have some
29:06
mainframes, to be honest. Sure, maybe not.
29:09
OK, not a not a shame to say that we do, yes.
29:13
And that makes it tougher to get an identity solution that works
29:20
for everything, right? Yeah, Yeah, we when we initially
29:24
kind of rolled out our customer identity strategy there are our
29:27
biggest goal was to, you know, own the the features and
29:32
functions that were most important for authenticating the
29:36
customer, right. And so that meant standing up an
29:38
identity platform that was able to perform at scale for, you
29:42
know, our 10s of millions of customers.
29:44
And that also included things like taking profile management
29:49
out of the hands of their applications, right?
29:51
And providing a service that allowed our application teams to
29:54
say, let's give can we look up the profile information for this
29:58
customer and not have to replicate profile information
30:02
across application environments. Those are some of the, you know,
30:04
simple goals, but it was important to establish that is
30:08
it as part of our platform to be able to allow it to scale and to
30:12
be able to allow other applications to come on board
30:15
and they don't have to worry about how does authentication
30:17
work? As long as you're able to
30:18
support a core standards Open ID Connect Oauth, you know your
30:23
your application can plug into our environment and we can get
30:26
you your customer authenticated and we get profile information
30:29
available for the customer and that's for everyone who plugs
30:32
into our platform. Yeah, and and something like
30:34
profile information, it sounds so simple, right?
30:37
We're just come on, applications don't keep the profile
30:40
information and then it's like, OK, well, what is central
30:44
profile information? Is shipping address centralized,
30:49
centralizable or does it matter what application they're using?
30:54
So there's that technical complexity and there's also the
30:58
complexity of do I want to give this up out of my application
31:02
and you know, and done there. Was a lot of that there's a lot
31:07
a lot of angst around that as well.
31:09
Yeah, it was you know, we wait you're going to you're going to
31:12
remove these key customer attributes out of our
31:15
application and put them somewhere essentially or what do
31:17
we want to allow them to change it?
31:18
Well, the customer go to one location where they manage
31:21
profile and they can make that change there, right.
31:24
And so those are well the concepts there early on that
31:27
didn't didn't sell immediately, but that the benefits from my
31:33
overall enterprise and platforms perspective were really kind of
31:37
key to kind of getting that accelerated once we got it stood
31:41
up. Everyone sees the value of it
31:44
two years after it's implemented and they forget how hard it was
31:47
to get there. But it takes somebody like
31:49
yourself. I don't care.
31:51
Don't miss an opportunity to remind them.
31:53
I don't know. I know.
31:56
I mean, that to me though is like a big deal, like getting
32:00
profile centralizes is different than just doing single sign on.
32:04
And it's now you're starting to dig into what is built into each
32:11
and every application, which is this picture of an identity.
32:15
Whereas, you know, let's take something like privacy
32:20
information or communication preferences.
32:22
You know, I don't want to receive a newsletter.
32:25
So say I go into one application, I turned off
32:28
newsletter and I keep getting newsletters because all the
32:31
other applications I didn't go and turn it off in my profile
32:34
there, right. The the customer experience
32:37
right there would be garbage. But if you can get all the
32:41
applications to see that and save the better for the better.
32:45
Good. It's let's centralized that now
32:49
you not, but it takes somebody like yourself caring.
32:52
And when I hear like, you know, I I've worked for large
32:55
companies and you know, I've done a lot of the CIM stuff and
32:59
you know, lasting somewhere 20 years, you go through you have
33:05
to you have to have a little bit of a tough skin.
33:07
And then I'm also sure, Andrew, that you're in the role that
33:10
you're mentoring people and encouraging them that like,
33:14
look, sometimes you have to go through the grind and you're
33:17
going to hit some lows. You ought to be able to bounce
33:19
off those lows. Can you talk about that a little
33:21
bit? Yeah, I mean, there's, there's
33:24
probably 1001 stories. I mean, there's a lot of, you
33:28
know, you want to make sure that you're, you, you prove the
33:32
desire to want to collaborate with people, right?
33:34
You, you don't want to come in with AI know I'm right and
33:38
you're wrong and this is how it's going to go.
33:41
So being able to listen is always been really key, right?
33:45
To be able to provide some feedback to people that is, is
33:49
not deprecating or demeaning in any way has been something that
33:52
has worked for me, right? And it GM culture in, in the
33:58
2000 or in the early 2000s was very different than how it is
34:01
now. And I was fortunate to be around
34:05
leaders who, who didn't necessarily believe we needed to
34:09
rule with a, an iron fist to be able to get things productive in
34:13
an enterprise environment the size of GM and solo.
34:16
That's kind of what has allowed me to kind of lead in that way,
34:20
right? I'm, I, I don't lead large team.
34:22
I don't manage large teams as a individual contributor.
34:26
I, I'm more focused on leading by example, by the example that
34:30
I set. And so I, I don't get into
34:33
trying to make sure that people know that I'm right.
34:36
Consensus building is still something that is valuable and
34:39
it makes people feel like they're included.
34:40
And so that's something I've always tried to follow.
34:42
Yeah, I really love that, you know, So again, I have to kind
34:46
of pick my topics because they could bend your ear all day.
34:51
But the last thing I wanted to talk about was I can imagine
34:55
that you have a very, let's just call it complex, for lack of a
35:00
better term, complex B to B environment where you've got
35:04
obviously suppliers, you've got dealerships, you've got a global
35:11
dealership network. You know, you've got to supply
35:14
those dealers with the ability to order new cars.
35:18
You know, maybe you have also beyond dealers, you have like
35:22
national accounts, like maybe a Hertz or a national, you know,
35:28
car rental kind of company where they buy thousands of cars.
35:31
Well, they're not maybe going to buy them from a dealer, but
35:34
there's all those complexities within.
35:37
But one of the things that I think from an identity
35:39
standpoint, that becomes the hardest to manage and all that
35:42
is delegated administration. You know, so that you don't have
35:47
to have like your help desk having phone calls come in like,
35:51
you know, from a dealer in Toledo saying, hey, we just
35:55
hired Nancy and she needs to have access to XY and Z systems
36:01
and all that. Somebody in that Toledo
36:03
dealership can go ahead and set up Nancy and then when Nancy no
36:07
longer works there, take away her access.
36:10
But that's one of the hardest things to solve.
36:12
I think they talk about that a little bit.
36:16
No, it is probably one of the hardest in workforce identity.
36:20
It's one of the hardest aspects to manage.
36:23
And just think about even what you see in the industry, you
36:27
don't even see that many products out there that are
36:30
targeted towards external user management, right?
36:32
You, you know, the IGA tools can do it to some degree, but it,
36:38
it's everyone's enterprise is so different that you really have
36:41
to put in some effort into, you know, what you described was
36:46
kind of the base level use case where yes, every organization,
36:51
every dealership, every supplier company has a security
36:55
coordinator, a someone responsible for onboarding their
36:58
users. But as you might guess, they're,
37:01
they're not exactly diligent in removing their access when
37:04
they're supposed to, right? And, and how do we handle that,
37:08
right? And, and how do we work with
37:09
those organizations when they have breaches in their
37:11
environment, when they have security issues, right?
37:14
All the things that we have a, we have a dedicated security
37:17
organization in our, in our IT organization that focuses on 3rd
37:22
party security, right? And making sure that our
37:26
partners that we work with maintain a minimal level of, of
37:32
risk in their environment. And we have a, you know, some
37:35
very important requirements or any partner that we interact
37:38
with to allow them to access GM systems.
37:41
And so those are things that when you start dealing with, you
37:44
know, we have 10,000 dealerships globally.
37:47
We have hundreds of, we have a supplier network that's multiple
37:52
tiers where we have suppliers that manage suppliers that
37:55
manage suppliers. And so it's very, very complex.
37:58
We have entirely dedicated infrastructures to to not only
38:02
make the delegated admin piece happen, but I would even say
38:06
that there's AB to B to C segment that comes in that is
38:12
doesn't fall into being managed in our with our workforce
38:16
identity infrastructure. But they're not exactly
38:19
customers, right? They fit into this little
38:21
example that you brought up. The rental car companies that we
38:24
deal with probably fall into that space where they, they have
38:28
a need to be able to do things like self-service registration,
38:32
sign up and get an account to have access to certain systems.
38:36
And they don't need to have access to all of our enterprise
38:39
systems, but there's a certain segment of systems that they can
38:42
get access to in a self-service manner that we manage that that
38:46
they have a need for as well. And so that's a another segment
38:50
of our external user population that we've, you know, had to
38:53
manage and create additional solutions for in that matter.
38:56
I've got to imagine that the the global aspect of what you do is
39:03
probably been around like the entire time that you've been
39:06
involved. But that brings on the whole
39:09
language issue. How many languages do you need
39:14
to support? And I'm going to ask the
39:16
question this way. What is what is the the harder
39:19
thing to manage is that the languages or the different
39:23
privacy laws that exist throughout the world.
39:27
Wow. That's a great question.
39:29
I'd say that the complexity of privacy laws has been something
39:32
that in recent years has really started to, to get attention,
39:39
right, Because, you know, the fines in, in, in these regions
39:43
are starting to get significant. So you don't want to get that
39:46
wrong, right? And so especially when it comes
39:49
to EU and, and how we handle location of personal data in
39:56
those regions, it's really important.
39:57
And so, yeah, it, it's being able and, and actually being
40:02
required to build solutions to allow our customers to do things
40:05
like right, to remove and things like that.
40:08
They've been. Part of what we do in recent
40:11
years, and so I'd say that's been the biggest challenge,
40:13
right, Being able to respond to the varying demands of privacy
40:18
globally for an enterprise of our size has been something
40:21
that's really, really important. It's a struggle for everybody, I
40:26
think, trying to this all together, but I think it
40:28
underlines and sort of underscores the value that I am
40:32
comes in maintaining compliance with a lot of this stuff.
40:35
If you're doing good, I am stuff generally speaking, you're going
40:39
to be that further ahead when it comes to compliance with
40:42
regulations. At least that's that's my
40:43
thought. Does that make sense or do you
40:45
disagree? It makes perfect sense.
40:47
So if you're doing things like not making multiple copies of
40:51
customer profile information everywhere, then when it's
40:53
going. To sync it, it's fine.
40:55
Yeah, yeah. See, that's the and that and
40:57
that where, you know, that's where it sells itself, right?
40:59
Where you don't have to, to be worried about how many copies
41:03
of, of, of databases that have been, you know, thrown around
41:06
the enterprise. That being able to satisfy
41:08
private privacy requirements gets a a bit easier at least.
41:12
And it's not as complex as it could be, right?
41:14
And so, yeah, now those are, those are things because that's
41:18
real money, right? That's real.
41:20
That's real cost that can get hit if you're not on top of, of
41:24
all of the requirements. If you're not, if your solutions
41:26
don't don't meet those requirements right, you can get
41:30
a lot of trouble really quick. I'd like to take the
41:33
conversation more to the consumer side.
41:35
I feel like a lot of people listening probably have a
41:38
vehicle. And one of the things that I've
41:39
noticed over the last several years is the rise of what I'll
41:43
call like a, a car account, right?
41:46
Whatever the manufacturer is, you know, GM is one of them.
41:49
But Volvo, Tesla, Rivian, right, all you name it, tend to have an
41:53
app and vehicles are moving now into almost like this cell phone
41:57
on wheels type of thing, right? Software defined vehicles,
42:01
etcetera. Can you talk a little bit about
42:03
how that works from an identity standpoint?
42:05
Like what are the benefits of you know, having AGM account or
42:08
maybe in, in the case of GMA, if it's a brand account, right,
42:10
whether it's Chevrolet or Cadillac or whatever it may be.
42:14
It's probably the most exciting part of what I would say,
42:17
although the customer identity space is the impact that we have
42:21
on the user experience in that way, in that everything that the
42:26
customer sees starts with what you do when you access your
42:31
product, right. And that's usually, you know,
42:33
when you when as excited as you are, when you buy a vehicle out
42:37
of the and you take it out of the dealership, the first thing
42:40
you do is you log into whatever that mobile app is and check out
42:44
all of the features that you can do through the mobile app,
42:46
right? And so it's really exciting that
42:49
we have been able to impact, you know, the overall vehicle
42:54
experience in that way and then be able to have, you know, not
42:58
multiple accounts from that, multiple logins when it comes to
43:01
kind of taking advantage of those experiences because, you
43:04
know, we're bringing more and more services into the vehicle
43:09
experience, right? So, you know, you're driving
43:11
along the road and you and, and you come across Starbucks,
43:15
right? You can, you can order your
43:16
Starbucks ahead of time and, and, and not do it through, you
43:18
know, not do it through your mobile app.
43:20
Those are things that are you can actually do through a head
43:22
unit. And so it's important to be able
43:25
to make the experience as seamless as possible and to
43:29
bring a single identity into that experience.
43:31
And so it should be as something as simple as here's an e-mail
43:35
address and I sign up for an app and I can be secure in accessing
43:40
my vehicle features. And that's, that's a, that's a
43:43
destination, right? And there's a, there's a lot of
43:45
ways. And that's why kind of focusing
43:47
on a single identity is so important because you don't want
43:51
to, to add friction to the user experience by, you know, forcing
43:56
them to poke in a password on the on the vehicle display,
44:00
right? That's not, that's not the best
44:02
way to go about that, right? So those are things that we've
44:05
been working really hard to make sure that we bring that best
44:08
experience to the vehicle, vehicle customer.
44:11
I feel like this is an area that is still ripe for conquest by
44:16
audio manufacturer where you can personalize the vehicle.
44:20
There's so much telemetry and so many things that you can now
44:22
control in the vehicle through an app or AP is right through
44:25
the app. And those sorts of things where
44:27
you know, if, if you're carrying your phone, for example, and you
44:31
know, you're using maybe an ultra wide band for your, your
44:34
mobile key, right? Or or some other Bluetooth
44:36
proximity, whatever. Maybe in in some scenarios it
44:38
knows that Jeff is getting in the car.
44:40
So let me set the seat position to this.
44:42
Let me log into, you know, my Spotify account or Apple Music
44:46
or whatever it may be, right? Set Google Maps and my direction
44:51
based on a calendar entry, right?
44:53
There's a lot of neat things that can happen, but you can't
44:56
do that without the identity layer actually pulling that
44:59
together, or this is an opportunity to connect those
45:02
experiences. Yeah, or delegate privileges to
45:05
do things in the vehicle to your kids, right, To be able to, you
45:08
know, work the work the display in the rear of the car to
45:13
whatever they want to do and be able to have their preferences
45:15
saved to a family set of preferences.
45:18
All the things that are also part of the picture, right?
45:20
And those are all huge, right? Those are those are selling
45:23
points, right. When you're able to provide
45:24
those that kind of granularity of features within the vehicle
45:28
experience. So yeah, I mean, that's, that's
45:30
what's exciting about it, right? And that's it.
45:32
It's really exciting to be able to see, not only to be able to
45:36
enable those cool things, but from our perspective, we're
45:39
trying to keep it secure, right? And so we're trying to, and I
45:42
know you guys bring, you've had Andrew Shikiar on several times
45:47
and I know that Fido has created an automotive working group
45:52
that's pretty exciting. And I can't announce anything,
45:55
but I'm just keep in mind that we're looking at it, we're aware
45:57
of it and, and, and we're excited to see how that
46:00
progresses. I feel like this is an area that
46:03
a lot of people struggle with, not people meaning auto, auto
46:06
manufacturers, when it comes to really nailing that app
46:09
experience. I promised before we hit record
46:12
that I would not get on my soapbox about the experience
46:16
that I've had with one of my recent vehicles and the let's
46:19
just still call it not barely passable grade that I would give
46:23
it from an experience. Why is it so hard to get that
46:27
right? Is that are there?
46:29
And you know, this is probably more of an app development
46:31
question, but are there technical underpinnings from an
46:33
identity perspective that make developing an app like that have
46:38
those capabilities more difficult or thought process?
46:41
Or is this like, hey, we've got the identity side, but there's
46:43
still more work to do on maybe API management or other
46:46
telemetry, you know, items that might be coming from the
46:49
vehicle? Yeah, huge aspect in terms of
46:52
security to be able to have a consistent set of security
46:56
controls that are end to end, right.
46:59
So that you know, not only are you doing things like MFA and
47:04
securing the account experience when the customer logs in, but
47:07
to be able to maintain that context all the way back into
47:11
back end systems. And so it is important down to
47:16
the developer level to be able to understand the differences of
47:19
experience when you are showing a webview versus a native app
47:25
experience and the differences of how that is perceived by the
47:29
customer. Those I, I can't tell you the
47:32
level of discussion that I have been involved in when it comes
47:37
to making decisions around showing a, in a mobile app,
47:41
whether you're showing something as simple as a webview versus a
47:43
native screen. And, and, and how people get
47:46
very passionate about what's, what's, what's best versus
47:51
what's most secure, right. And so the standards do have a
47:54
play in that. And, and as standards evolve and
47:57
as products evolve to be able to support those better
48:00
experiences, that's great. And I think Oauth and I think
48:04
what's been exciting is kind of the version of Oauth that has
48:10
near approval, the 2.1 version of Autumn is coming out that's
48:15
addressing some of that actually keeping things more secure, but
48:18
it's allowing more to be bring more native experiences to our
48:21
customers. And so that's something that's
48:24
it's a help overall, but it's, it's huge to be able to make
48:30
sure that there's consistency across the experiences in the,
48:34
and not only from just the app itself, but to how interactions
48:38
get into your back office. And so things like WAFF and API
48:43
gateways and you know, all of that plays a role when it comes
48:48
to the customer, you know, authenticating, doing MFA and
48:53
doing something as simple as hitting the button to start
48:55
their vehicle that there's, there's an awful lot of
48:59
interaction that happens. Attempt to secure that from end
49:02
to end. I feel like this is an area that
49:05
maybe people aren't as aware of is the speed of all this needs
49:10
to be like sub millisecond because you just, you just
49:14
listed a whole bunch of like speed bumps, right?
49:16
The laugh and API bouncing back and forth, micro services,
49:19
etcetera. Every second that when you hit
49:22
that button on the app to say, start my vehicle, unlock my
49:24
door, call for help, right? Whatever it may be.
49:28
That is all mission critical things where you cannot have
49:31
identity be the slowest link in the chain.
49:34
How do you tackle speed when it comes to make it secure but make
49:37
it fast? Yeah, that's, that's part of the
49:40
process of bringing things to production to make sure that you
49:43
have the, the, the performance, the response, the, the, the, the
49:48
least latency involved when making.
49:53
So there's in all of the best practices that need to be
49:56
brought to bear when it comes to edge computing, right, to be
50:00
able to make calls to an API services layer that can respond
50:05
and, and recognize that a a user is authenticated and have
50:09
authenticated with MFA and that we can process this request
50:13
versus yeah, this doesn't look right.
50:16
Let's reject the request, let's cancel this session because
50:18
they've been compromised, right? We get a threat signal that says
50:20
that the user may be compromised, right.
50:22
So those are things that have to be taken into account.
50:25
But yeah, at our scale and, and to be able to have a response
50:31
time when you start your vehicle of a couple of seconds is, is
50:33
something that is AI think it's the highest level of, of
50:37
distributed system engineering at our level that to be able to
50:41
get that done. And it's, there's a lot
50:43
involved, like you just said, there's, there's so many
50:45
systems, so many interactions that happen that the customer
50:49
never sees, right. But that we have to get involved
50:52
with to make sure there's policies, they get touched, they
50:55
get triggered so many points along the way.
50:59
And that's what it's fun. That's what's made the whole
51:01
journey of the fun, to be able to get into all of that.
51:03
I was going to say it's you sound like you're having fun
51:06
with it. It's getting more and more fun
51:08
as time goes on. You know, in addition to kind of
51:12
the speed bumps that Jeff mentioned, and I think he was
51:15
right on with that. The thought that I was having
51:17
the whole time was, you know, you got to remember it's a car,
51:21
there's all these things going on.
51:22
It's got to be able to stop when it gets to that red light.
51:25
And if it's got to send an API and like, you know, it gets to
51:29
the point where the technology can compromise safety
51:34
especially, that would not fly. Those are just some background
51:38
thoughts. So I'm not asking you to react
51:39
to that because that's kind of obvious, right?
51:42
But you did bring up something about standards and I would
51:45
think, you know, one of the hurdles would be that this is an
51:49
area when it comes to technology in the cars that's going to be a
51:53
real differentiator between car one and car 2.
51:58
But the security piece of setting standards for security,
52:03
to me, everybody's a long term winner if there is some
52:08
standards work that's done together.
52:11
So is that your perspective that you bring when you're working
52:15
with a group like Fido in terms of, you know, moving forward
52:20
this this working group? And I know you didn't have an
52:22
announcement, but I just wanted to know if that was your
52:25
perspective. Yeah.
52:26
So absolutely the the answer is yes, that when you consider that
52:31
you know, as consumer technologies take off, so things
52:35
like pass keys that people are adopting that their technology
52:38
platforms are adopting, right? You would think that they would
52:43
be customers would be wet ready and willing to leverage those
52:46
technologies with their in vehicle experiences, right.
52:49
So using pass keys for payments might be something that people
52:52
are interested in, right. And so to have those and to see
52:56
the industry adoption at this point is an indicator that the
53:01
customers would like to be able to continue to use these kind of
53:05
features as they're made available.
53:06
So, yeah, I mean, again, we're aware of that and we want to
53:13
make everyone's experience easier.
53:14
So we'll be paying close attention to those as we as that
53:18
evolves, right. So, yeah, we're really excited
53:20
to to hear that. You know, I've talked to Andrew
53:22
a number of times about this that the, the, the working group
53:26
around Fido has kicked off for automotive.
53:29
So that that we're expecting a lot of great things to come out
53:31
of that. As I'd say like some level
53:36
talking, going back to that exciting feeling, it's like all
53:39
of you only just like start your career over right now and like
53:42
just see where things are going the next 20 or 30 years or
53:47
whatever it's going to be that a career becomes after in in that
53:51
time. But let's talk about AII mean
53:56
that's on the tip of everyone's tongue, right?
53:58
That's it's almost scary to think right now, like if you're
54:01
just starting out right now, like am I going to be obsolete
54:06
2030 years from now? I think it's more of an enable.
54:10
I think it's AI is going to be built to serve humans and make
54:15
life better. That's my optimistic
54:18
perspective. What's your perspective on, you
54:22
know, a couple of big things that are going to happen in your
54:25
industry, in the automotive industry because of AI?
54:29
I think we're going to see a more at a larger proliferation
54:34
of, of agent based AI that will interact with customers and to
54:39
be able to give that first level of service and experience that
54:44
is more responsive, you know, more accurate in terms of, you
54:49
know, what you may have been able to get from the the, the
54:52
chat bots that that kind of preceded agents today.
54:55
And so I think that's going to be kind of low hanging fruit to
54:59
be able to take advantage of those kinds of experiences
55:02
within the solutions that we build and deliver.
55:04
I I think, you know, machine learning and AI has been used
55:08
from a security perspective, right?
55:09
Where we've been getting threat signals that have that have been
55:13
based on AI for a number of years now, right?
55:16
And so, you know, things like password spray attacks, things
55:19
like impossible travel, all of that is based on machine
55:23
learning that the that the vendors are providing.
55:25
So I think you'll see that evolve, right?
55:27
And we, you know, enterprises of our size are building a pretty
55:30
rich set of data around users and entitlements and the
55:36
resources that they access. And so to be able to do all the
55:39
things like automatic deprovisioning if you're not
55:42
using a resource make a lot of sense, right?
55:44
You don't have to go through that manual effort of removing
55:47
somebody through an access review.
55:49
You have some kind of of of agent, you know, watching all of
55:53
that activity and if they don't touch something for six months,
55:55
then you must not need access to it.
55:57
Let's take you out of it. So I think those are kind of
56:01
things that are will start to make a lot of sense within the
56:04
enterprise and things that touch customers.
56:06
I think you'll start to see some form of agentic AI in the
56:11
vehicle eventually where you'll be able to do things.
56:13
If you can do it within your home, you should be able to do a
56:16
lot of those things within the vehicle.
56:17
So I think you'll start to see a lot of that eventually.
56:20
So I think that's probably a good spot or maybe we can leave
56:23
it for this week. I want to thank you because I
56:27
told you before we hit record that we're going to take your
56:29
brain and like splay it out and we can keep going on and on for
56:32
this. I, I feel like this is an area
56:35
that is like super exciting. I am, I'm I'm an EV fan.
56:39
I think that's kind of on record at this point and the the
56:43
identity experience is such a core part of that.
56:47
I want to see you guys nail it, right?
56:49
It's like I want to see everyone nail it because, you know, this
56:53
is the experience you're having the vehicle.
56:54
So I and I and I think of the future, right?
56:56
Where is this going? OK, we're all connected vehicles
56:58
and things got to be secure. What happens when vehicles start
57:02
talking to each other and things get safer, whether it's self
57:05
driving or even just shared signals maybe between vehicles
57:09
which are devices to say hey, I'm slowing down or I'm
57:11
accelerating. I mean, I just think of the
57:14
safety applications when our. Standards for that too.
57:16
Yes. So I think it'll be super cool
57:18
to get there. And you know, identity is going
57:20
to be such a core component of that.
57:21
And and as Jim mentioned, we can talk about this forever.
57:24
So, but I want to talk about a couple things.
57:28
You're a Detroit guy. I want to first of all, and I'm
57:30
a an Alliance fan. You can see on your shirt there
57:33
I'm Bears fan. So I want to thank you first of
57:35
all for Ben Johnson and having him come over.
57:38
We're very excited to have him. I've kind of been on record with
57:41
my friends as it's Ben Johnson or bust.
57:43
We got the guy. So thank you for letting him
57:46
come to us. I that being said, I was rooting
57:49
for Detroit Lions in the play offs.
57:51
I wanted to see them. Yeah, at least make the Super
57:53
Bowl, but that didn't happen. So I'm going to put you on the
57:56
spot for Detroit Lions. Give me, give me a win total for
58:01
next year because they had a great year this year.
58:05
No, I think 12 wins is the floor, right.
58:08
So, you know, we're bringing the cast back.
58:12
We don't have our coordinators. So that's going to be
58:14
interesting evolution of of how things happen.
58:18
But yeah, twelve wins is the kind of the minimum that I would
58:22
say. And yeah, let's get a home
58:24
playoff game. And, and and that's, that's,
58:27
that's the lowest expectation at this point, right?
58:29
And as a Lions fan, you know, after 60 years of 60 plus years
58:34
of, of what we have realized, you know, what we've seen in the
58:37
past couple years is been great, you know, so, you know, and
58:43
that's regular season. You know, one of my most
58:47
tremendous playoff disappointments was last year
58:50
when we were at halftime of the NFC championship and thought we
58:54
were in the bag and it didn't happen.
58:55
So yeah, we'll stick with it. We'll we'll keep the faith and I
59:01
think, yeah, a minimum of 12 wins next year, get a home
59:03
playoff game and we'll take it from there.
59:06
OK, so we're going to put that on record.
59:07
That's the that'll be on ESPN. 12 wins or bust for the Detroit
59:11
Lions, courtesy of NFL analyst Andrew Cameron and also
59:14
technical fellow. I am at GM.
59:17
All right, another for Detroit thing, pizza.
59:20
Are you a Detroit style, New York style or Chicago style
59:24
pizza? I am Chicago style primarily and
59:30
we have a Chicago style pizza place here in Detroit called
59:34
Pizzapolis. It's in downtown Detroit that
59:37
has been a staple for decades and I would recommend anyone to
59:41
hit that. It's it's as good as any Chicago
59:44
deep dish that I've ever had. And I've been, I've had, you
59:47
know, I've had George Donald and everything else from Chicago,
59:49
but I'd say Pizza Papolis is probably our our best kind of
59:53
deep dish Chicago style pizza and that's the one I've enjoyed
59:56
the most. It's the one thing I'm one of
59:59
the things I miss living in North Carolina now is the pizza
1:00:02
down here is nowhere near as good.
1:00:04
It's the Chicago area, so I'm always.
1:00:06
Looking for pizza? Spots to to hit up.
1:00:08
OK, Jim, real quick, are you what, New York?
1:00:12
Chicago or Detroit pizza? I've always been Detroit or you
1:00:16
know, I used to work at the Renaissance Center, Andrew and.
1:00:20
You know. Greektown.
1:00:21
There's, there's, I don't know, I always felt like Detroit was
1:00:25
coming back. I was there around 2009 through
1:00:29
2012 and I felt like Detroit was really coming back.
1:00:34
But what I really loved the most about the place was the pizza.
1:00:38
And but given that I love New York style pizza, there's not
1:00:44
many pizzas I don't like. So.
1:00:48
But Detroit's my favorite, yeah. At the early stages of our, of
1:00:52
our kind of the, the downtown rebirth was right around 2011,
1:00:56
2012. It's, it's a lot different even
1:00:59
now than it was 1012 years ago. So it's it's pretty exciting
1:01:04
down there now. Yeah, I, I've always been
1:01:07
rooting for Detroit to come back because I think it like, you
1:01:10
know, it became like the thing that people would, would almost
1:01:15
joke about is like, oh, it was a safe to joke about.
1:01:18
Like, oh, Detroit is falling apart.
1:01:20
And it's like, First off, that's it's not really funny.
1:01:23
And 2nd off, it's really a good, a good city.
1:01:27
And now I felt like it was coming back while I was there.
1:01:31
Yeah, I've been here all the life.
1:01:32
I'm a lifelong Detroiter and I will, I can represent, you know,
1:01:36
if you want to know the truth, talk to me.
1:01:38
I'll give you the truth. Don't, don't, don't follow the
1:01:41
Internet and what it's been saying from a downtown
1:01:44
perspective, it's so totally different.
1:01:46
And it's, if it's anyone that's, you know, the NFL draft that was
1:01:50
here a couple of years ago, I think was an overwhelming
1:01:53
example of us being able to host large events and people all
1:01:58
having a great time when they're here.
1:01:59
So it's pretty cool. I've never been to Detroit other
1:02:03
than the airport. That's pretty much it.
1:02:05
One of the. One of the cities.
1:02:06
In Midwest I haven't been to. Come, come, come one, Jeff.
1:02:11
We'll, I'll give you the the Grand Tour anytime.
1:02:15
You're welcome. All right, all right, that's
1:02:18
probably a good spot. Well, I'm going to head up to
1:02:20
Detroit. We're going to get some pizza,
1:02:21
and then I'm going to continue to take little slices of
1:02:23
Andrew's brain and tear it out and put it on display for people
1:02:27
in the podcast. So that's what we'll do.
1:02:29
Andrew, thank you so much for being part of this.
1:02:32
You're it's funny right now because you're using the virtual
1:02:33
background and you've totally faded.
1:02:36
It's almost like homework going. In Slime I.
1:02:40
Think, yeah, the lighting just changed in my room, which is
1:02:42
really interesting. But yeah.
1:02:44
If that's not a signal, it's a wrap up.
1:02:46
There you go. All right, Andrew, thank you for
1:02:49
being part of this. I'm going to have your LinkedIn
1:02:50
profile on our show notes so people can reach out, whether
1:02:52
it's, you know, about identity or maybe just better places to
1:02:56
eat pizza in the Detroit area where you can have those
1:02:58
conversations. You can find us on the web, IDC
1:03:01
podcast.com. Again, we'll have all of our
1:03:03
discounts for the conferences on our homepage.
1:03:06
Reach out to Jim and I and we get lots of great guests come on
1:03:09
through word of mouth and networking and things like that.
1:03:11
So let us know if you've got folks that'll be good for an
1:03:15
episode like this. And yeah, like and subscribe.
1:03:17
That always helps us out. Doesn't cost you anything.
1:03:20
Hit that button. But it does help us out
1:03:22
immensely. So with that, we'll go ahead and
1:03:24
leave it for this week. Andrew has almost completely
1:03:26
faded into the Bush Lake Homer and thank everyone for watching
1:03:30
and or listening and we'll talk with you all in the next one.
1:03:33
Thanks guys. You've been listening to
1:03:37
Identity at the Center. We hope you've enjoyed the show.
1:03:41
Make sure to like, rate and review, and we'll be back soon.
1:03:45
But in the meantime, hit the website at
1:03:47
identity@thecenter.com. See you next time on Identity at
1:03:54
the Center.