Latest / Identity at the Center / #285 - Identiverse 2024: Danny de Vreeze from Thales OneWelcome
Transcript
- 0:00You know, the same kind of AI that you use with Open Open AI
- 0:04or ChatGPT and the Google AI or Gemini is being able to go in
- 0:09there and have an iterative conversation through natural
- 0:13language that's going to enable non-technical people to ask
- 0:17business questions and get real answers that they can understand
- 0:21and then iterate on. I do think we've got a bit of a
- 0:24challenge on that. I think it's going to be a art
- 0:28almost like prompt engineering. Where do you start and do we get
- 0:32the right answer to the question we're asking?
- 0:34And obviously AI sometimes can just go in the other direction.
- 0:36I've did some some of the try out over the weekend myself as
- 0:39well. It's interesting to see, but I
- 0:41mean, we're going to get there because this gets smarter and
- 0:43smarter. So I think this whole copilot
- 0:45the the conversational part is going somewhere.
- 0:48It's also fair to say, I think at this moment we're in not even
- 0:51prototype within proto hype situation.
- 0:54So everybody, it's a second buzzword.
- 0:56Well, we've seen some buzzwords in our industry, Blockchain, CEO
- 0:59trust. I mean, I had some CEO trust
- 1:01coffee today, I mean. With 100% extra AI, yeah.
- 1:05Actually exactly. But but I think AI is a
- 1:07different dimension to it because it's going to change
- 1:10fundamentally how we how we work with our systems.
- 1:13And I think that's that's a great addition.
- 1:21This is identity at the center if it has anything to do with
- 1:26IAM. This is the go to podcast now
- 1:31your hosts Jim McDonald and Jeff Stedman.
- 1:41Welcome to the Identity at the Center podcast.
- 1:42I'm Jeff, and that's Jim. Hey, Jim.
- 1:44Hey, Jeff, how are you? Not so bad.
- 1:46You sound a little gravely there.
- 1:47For I know it's not sounding very gravely, what's going on.
- 1:49I don't know, man. You're in Vegas, so it's.
- 1:51Very dry here in Vegas, but I'm having a fantastic time.
- 1:55This is a very international conference, you know, I mean we
- 1:58have folks a lot from South America, Canada, Europe.
- 2:04Just thinking of Espenbago who's here.
- 2:07He's one of our friends, friend of the show and you know, a long
- 2:11time friend just mostly just from interacting.
- 2:14He's just such a a great person. Our guest today, Danny, is
- 2:19coming from one of my favorite countries in the world, the
- 2:22Netherlands, which I always called just Holland, just
- 2:25fantastic place. And you know, it's one, I think
- 2:28it's one of the underrated aspects of this conference.
- 2:31So I've never been, but yes, it is a worldwide attendance.
- 2:34So you have already alluded to it.
- 2:36We got Danny Devries, he's the VP of Identity and Access
- 2:39Management at Talos. Welcome, Danny.
- 2:41Thank you guys. Great to be here.
- 2:43Well, thanks for taking the time.
- 2:44Definitely want to give a shout out to RSM for helping us get
- 2:47here. And then also Cyber Risk
- 2:48Alliance for giving this lovely recording space that you're
- 2:51seeing on probably YouTube. But let's get into it.
- 2:54Danny, how did you get into identity?
- 2:56Is it something that you chose or did it choose you well?
- 2:59Actually it's a good question. I think it's a bit of both to be
- 3:01true for truthful here. I also realized this morning,
- 3:04it's my 25th years more as an identity and access management,
- 3:07although in the early part of this we would not be calling it
- 3:10like that. So did it choose me or did it
- 3:13did I choose it? I mean, let me take a bit of my
- 3:15journey. And by the way, I'm a business
- 3:17guy, yes. So you may ask me some very
- 3:20technical questions and it will be slightly more difficult for
- 3:22me to answer. But when I started actually my
- 3:24first company, we focused on a thing called enterprise portals.
- 3:28And almost immediately we ended up with a problem because I
- 3:31liked this idea of personalization.
- 3:34I liked us to actually bring things to customers in the way
- 3:36they like it to be. And we found out that identity
- 3:39information was not stored in one place, but in multiple
- 3:42places. So before we actually really
- 3:44could embark on a personalization journey in a
- 3:46portal, we'd have to sort something around identity and
- 3:50action management. I mean, we call it by then user
- 3:52management. And I heard my techie guy say we
- 3:54need a meta directory to aggregate all this kind of
- 3:56stuff. In the end, my interest it was
- 3:59delivering an answer by sporter. So I mean, I obviously ran into
- 4:03IM because of doing this. So did it choose me?
- 4:06Did I choose it? I think a bit about in this, in
- 4:09this case, I've been in this space ever since that moment we
- 4:13wrote, we ran more and more into the I am space user management
- 4:18focus on B2E enterprise portals. Early days I was running a
- 4:21company called Everett, which was in the zero is the largest
- 4:25European boutique as I and I am. So we worked with a lot of the
- 4:29the income players at that moment in time, Novell, Oracle,
- 4:32Sun Microsystems. Later on we saw some models as
- 4:35well coming up sale point. Obviously when the IJ motion
- 4:39started back in the zeros, we added some other companies to
- 4:43the portfolio. Obviously Bing we worked with
- 4:47and then for sure came from the micro system team.
- 4:50So I mean what we were doing is we were working for large
- 4:54enterprise companies in Europe. So we're not focused on the
- 4:57small medium. And I think what we always like
- 5:00to say is we work with complexity.
- 5:03We also like to say, I think some of my competitors are now
- 5:06using it, their complexity, deal with it.
- 5:08And that's what we what we did because we understood that if
- 5:14it's only 1 user constituency talking to one application, you
- 5:17don't really need us. But if it's multiple user
- 5:20constituencies, multiple departments, maybe internal and
- 5:23external, you've got tons of IM application, you want to give
- 5:28access to it and certainly you need to have something in
- 5:30between. So there was a great, great
- 5:32thing for me to do in the zeros. I grew the company pretty fast
- 5:35across Europe. So I mean, I appreciate that the
- 5:39center of gravity and I am then, but even now was a bit more on
- 5:42this side of the pond. But we had a great time actually
- 5:45integrating these technologies and working with the parties
- 5:47that came from this side and bring that to our customer base.
- 5:51The only thing which I realized is that complexity is not only
- 5:55in the first implementation, but also in the run stage.
- 5:58So another company which I had on the side of Everett was a
- 6:01company called Esse Everett Solutions Support Center.
- 6:05The idea was that companies needed support while they
- 6:08implement, run and manage the solution.
- 6:11So this is what we did, by the way, first second line support
- 6:14also for the big players. And we did, they gave the
- 6:17solution support for our customers because we believed
- 6:20it's not just the technology, it's actually the way it's
- 6:22implemented, how people are using it that needed to be the
- 6:25scope of support. Well, I mean, you mentioned to
- 6:29me earlier, but how did you end up in the cloud then because
- 6:31this was still all on Prem. Yeah, that's true. 2010.
- 6:35I said back, and I like to do this every once in a while, just
- 6:37think about, OK, what is the business model that's going to
- 6:40make my company obsolete? Because I'm fair believe that if
- 6:44you can think of such a model, you better start it yourself.
- 6:46That's right. Yeah, 2011, I started I Welcome,
- 6:49which later on became one welcome.
- 6:52But the idea that the business model that's going to make a lot
- 6:54of IT companies obsolete is a cloud based model.
- 6:57So at that moment HRCRM Finance was all going into the cloud and
- 7:01the thesis was why not? I am as well.
- 7:04Well, obviously in the US with a couple of companies that started
- 7:07in the same time frame, one of them being knocked out.
- 7:10So they went a bit faster than I did.
- 7:12There's a big difference, by the way, starting this in Europe or
- 7:15starting that in the US, But the idea was it should be possible
- 7:19to deliver all of this for the cloud as well, which actually
- 7:23meant that my other company efforts had to get adjusted.
- 7:25Because I mean, if you want to work with a cloud based, you do
- 7:27not implement it all by yourself.
- 7:30You can become slightly less technical, but you elevate the
- 7:32conversation maybe to business level, to architects, to
- 7:35security officers that now want to do things from the cloud.
- 7:39So 1 Welcome, I Welcome was founded on Valentine's Day, so
- 7:44not only a friendly company name, but also a friendly day to
- 7:46start. And I think I do want to
- 7:49highlight the name I Welcome later on.
- 7:51One welcome. I mean, we could have called the
- 7:54company I Security because a lot of the stuff that we're doing is
- 7:56security. But for me, I'm thinking back
- 7:58about the personalization thing as well.
- 8:01It is all about giving access in a frictionless way.
- 8:03I mean, frankly, you don't even think about security if you
- 8:09don't want to give people access.
- 8:10I mean, the one comes from before the other.
- 8:12I also believe that if you make things frictionless and easy to
- 8:15use, it's already safer. I mean, see the whole password
- 8:18discussion. I mean, I never believed in
- 8:19passwords because I mean, they are creating friction and if
- 8:23they need to be complex, they're not as safe as we want it to be
- 8:25because we're going to reuse somebody else's or we're going
- 8:27to use the same convention. So I welcome really started with
- 8:31ID. We need to make things easy,
- 8:33frictionless, simple, as good as we can.
- 8:36It's interesting. I just want to jump in on that
- 8:38point because I think it's interesting how you'll have kind
- 8:42of a push and pull between the business and security where the
- 8:45business wants to just let people in Six character or 4
- 8:49digit PIN would be plenty of security.
- 8:52The security team maybe wants like multi factor authentication
- 8:55etcetera, etcetera that that is still happening today in certain
- 8:59places. I think both sides are becoming
- 9:03more conscious of the other side and the rationale behind it.
- 9:08I also wanted to point out one other thing that you're talking
- 9:10about, like 2010 talking about the cloud, what's going.
- 9:14It wasn't a slam dunk at that time.
- 9:16It was kind of like, is this cloud thing really going to
- 9:20happen? Is it going to come to fruition?
- 9:22Ultimately? Obviously we all know that the
- 9:25answer is yes, but at that time it wasn't clear.
- 9:28Absolutely. And even more so in Europe.
- 9:31So what I used to do is validate any ID.
- 9:33So that starts with a PowerPoint presentation, talk to a couple
- 9:36of my customers in Europe. And then in the UK, the response
- 9:40was, well, Danny, if you organize it well, we may
- 9:42consider in the Netherlands it was like a 5050 answer and in
- 9:46Germany it was pretty clear as well.
- 9:48Nine, we're not going to bring our stuff to the cloud.
- 9:50I mean that was a very clear, clear answer as well.
- 9:53So where we are right right now is that actually that's ID
- 9:56obviously or the mindset has gone and today people are
- 10:00accepted to the fact that there's cloud still not every
- 10:04place it's getting a bit. He was a little rowdy in out
- 10:09there and Jim wasn't having. It so he closed.
- 10:11Sorry. Yeah, a little too much.
- 10:13I could hear it. It wasn't, It wasn't
- 10:15distracting. So.
- 10:16OK, so let's get back to the track.
- 10:19Yeah, you want to read the spot? We'll.
- 10:23Do it. We'll do it live as we do we'll.
- 10:25Do it live as we do. So I mean that moment in time,
- 10:28the cloud was a difficult thing, especially in Europe and Europe
- 10:31is not just one place. Each and every country was
- 10:33different and the the ideas around privacy is different.
- 10:36The ideas about cloud adoption was completely different.
- 10:39That has changed over the last 15 years, obviously.
- 10:42I mean, this is where we are today.
- 10:43Getting back to what you said about the difference of the
- 10:46business versus maybe the security domains, it's true, but
- 10:50there's also simple answer to it.
- 10:51Step up. Do not start with the most
- 10:54complex processes or requirements if it can be done
- 10:59with way less. Make it easier for people to
- 11:02join a website where actually privacy is not a concern maybe,
- 11:05or wherever you just need to get some lightweight services.
- 11:09And when things get a bit more complex or where you want to
- 11:11add, for instance, additional privacy measures, then you ask
- 11:14people to to, well, actually register to a different kind of
- 11:17authentication. Yeah, It seems like the the use
- 11:20case that I've run into a lot, it's like you want to buy
- 11:22something for $10 and do you want to go and create an
- 11:26account? That's too much friction in a
- 11:29lot of cases. Let them do a cash check out.
- 11:32Yeah, we should do this a lot, for instance with insurance
- 11:33companies. So if you have a travel
- 11:36insurance, I mean, do you need to get all your private
- 11:38information on it or I mean is the risk low enough for an
- 11:42insurance companies? OK, we accept a certain amount
- 11:44of certainty. That's right.
- 11:45However, if with the same insurance company, you're also
- 11:49going to use their health insurance and obviously there's
- 11:51a two sided where we want to have more privacy protection
- 11:53because me as a person wants to be protected better and the
- 11:57company needs to protect your identity better.
- 11:59So and it's logical for you at that moment in time to friends
- 12:02in the Netherlands use an Eid or have a multi factor
- 12:05authentication form factor being used.
- 12:08I mean, this is a logical step up in a journey which could have
- 12:11started with maybe username password for the travel
- 12:13insurance itself. So I mean, step up is usually
- 12:16the way out. And what I've seen a couple of
- 12:18times when you talk to customers, it's it was also the
- 12:21almost like happy people could be enlightened.
- 12:25OK, we can find each other here because we can do both.
- 12:27Yeah, you can actually do both as long as you think it from a
- 12:30customer journey perspective. What's easier for you to use to
- 12:33start with, and what needs to be increased at some stage in time?
- 12:38Yeah. That's such a good point.
- 12:41And so that evolvement, where did that kind of lead you to in
- 12:46terms of this your journey? Yeah, So maybe we're now at the
- 12:52the beginning of the the tense. What we did with the cloud based
- 12:55thing is obviously we found some good customers that actually
- 12:58wanted to try it out. What was really interesting to
- 13:01see is that some companies actually went all the way.
- 13:04So you had these earlier dots of cloud and obviously for us it
- 13:07was let's focus on these guys and do things.
- 13:09The other thing which I asked my techie team to do is adhere to
- 13:13at least one crank principle and that was be integratable because
- 13:16I don't want to get into a story with our cloud proposition that
- 13:19we, yeah, you can only use it if we replace everything.
- 13:22If you've got some stuff over there which is already working
- 13:23well, we integrate with it. Being integratable is a key
- 13:26thing for us to actually get into customer situation and get
- 13:29them acquainted with, OK, this can work from the cloud.
- 13:32Well, they could still sweat the asset they had or actually for
- 13:35us not being just intrusive with everything else.
- 13:37So that's what we did in the in the early time 2015, two 1016,
- 13:42which I had to make a bet. I mean, as simple as it is, we
- 13:45saw how the Americans were growing, what happened in terms
- 13:48of financing and it's, it's true you can sometimes outsmart
- 13:52competition, but there is a threshold of money which you can
- 13:55no longer outsmart. So we have to pick up choices.
- 13:58And that's one of the things I did.
- 13:59I. I choose to completely refocus
- 14:03to the science side, which at that moment time was a really
- 14:05upcoming consumer identity and access management or customer
- 14:08identity and access management terms being used.
- 14:11I. Don't think we haven't decided
- 14:13yet. No, we haven't.
- 14:13Decided yet so I used to take it from the consumer angle and we
- 14:18had this upcoming thing in Europe called GDPR.
- 14:21So this whole privacy awareness was just going sky high in
- 14:25Europe and I was looking at OK, I mean this is going to create a
- 14:28lot of friction. This is what the general idea of
- 14:29most people well that really didn't resonate with I welcome.
- 14:33So what we did is we build a science platform, ground up,
- 14:37complete new data model underneath.
- 14:40And the idea was, let's see how we can make this conversational.
- 14:44So how can we intertwine or inject consent while you're on a
- 14:47customer journey and very conversation.
- 14:49So let me just give you an example because that highlights
- 14:51best. And let's assume you're using a
- 14:53taxi app and then you order for a taxi and then the app asks
- 14:57you, OK, can I use your can I get your phone number so that
- 15:00the driver can call you once in front the door?
- 15:02Hey, makes sense for me to get my phone number at this moment
- 15:05in time, not before, because why these guys using it for for this
- 15:08purpose? Actually, it makes sense.
- 15:10So what the app does, it asks you the question, you give
- 15:12consent to use, you give your mobile number, we store, OK.
- 15:15The consent is given for this purpose only.
- 15:18So extremely safe, completely auditable by the DPO, whereas it
- 15:21did not increase any additional friction.
- 15:23Actually it felt very comfortable for the user.
- 15:26So this is the way we restructured our platform.
- 15:30And also let's end of 2016 that we certainly were ranked #2 by
- 15:36Gartner after Gigi and Gen. Ring, which were the income and
- 15:39sign providers. I mean, in Europe, there was a
- 15:43bit of a challenge with the traditional ones because they
- 15:46felt and with GDP upcoming, this is all like almost like
- 15:49borderline illegal getting so much data out of it.
- 15:51I mean, if it was true or not truthful, but I mean this is
- 15:53obviously the perception and with privacy you have to deal
- 15:56especially early days, a lot of perception, same as with cloud
- 15:59by the way, but really, really have a story that resonated well
- 16:03in the European play. So again making things
- 16:06frictionless, again providing step.
- 16:08Progressive profiling is the term you hear a lot, right?
- 16:12Yeah. It was like real hot for a
- 16:14while. You don't hear it as much
- 16:15anymore, but sounds like that's kind of the vein that you're
- 16:18talking about. Yeah, it's progressive
- 16:20profiling, progressive consent that that's how we looked at it.
- 16:23So and a deep progressive profiling was a huge one, was
- 16:27like a marketing play. So get more and more information
- 16:30and if somebody actually leaves his Facebook behind, let's see
- 16:33what we can get from it. Yeah.
- 16:35What we did is actually not using it as a marketing thing,
- 16:38but really as like, OK, how we can we get consented information
- 16:42from people that you can reuse well.
- 16:44I think it was interesting that you use that scenario of the
- 16:47taxi. And do you want the taxi to be
- 16:50able to call you when they're there?
- 16:51That's a great way to say, yeah, This is why, you know, this is
- 16:55this is a great way to not only get the consent, but it's tied
- 16:58to a service that the customer ultimately wants.
- 17:02How important is it to find those those services to tie the
- 17:06consent to and how difficult is it to track?
- 17:09Well, I've only consented to use it in this scenario.
- 17:13So if, you know, DoorDash is very big, I use it all the time.
- 17:16I want to know when my food is is about to arrive or if there's
- 17:19problems, things like that. So I'm giving consent at
- 17:22different points of my customer journey to say if they don't
- 17:26have the item, call me right or make a substitution or things
- 17:29like that. Talk to me more about that idea
- 17:33of tying consent not just for collections sake, but for the
- 17:37journey and the reason why the customer would want to give you
- 17:41that consent. Yes, obviously that's that's
- 17:43pretty bespoken because each and every company has a different
- 17:46user journey and even companies in the same segment will have
- 17:49different user journeys. So I mean this is actually where
- 17:51I would say as eyes and other companies have to come in, they
- 17:55need to somehow transfer the business logic into what we can
- 17:59supply as a application fund because we're not nothing much
- 18:02than that. The only thing we obviously had
- 18:04to do is make sure that the platform is as flexible as
- 18:07possible so you can actually accommodate all these different
- 18:10kind of journeys. In the end it's not a different
- 18:12from what you just suggest because you just asked
- 18:14something, that's all. ID ask things and ask it in the
- 18:17appropriate moment because that is going to be the killer.
- 18:19It's not a killer as. The context, it's the killer
- 18:21moment. It's why are you asking me this
- 18:24and why do I want to give you that consent and from?
- 18:26GDPR point of view, then you also need to make sure that you
- 18:29store the reason why. I mean that that's key.
- 18:31And then later on, obviously, you can also say, OK, this is
- 18:33the reason why we stored, because the, the fundament
- 18:36behind GDPR is ask for consent, show what you have stored so you
- 18:41can actually change your consent.
- 18:42And the third thing, I mean, protect the data as good as you
- 18:45can and delete all. If somebody wants to delete it,
- 18:47you don't need it. I mean, that's the kind of the
- 18:50basic behind it, which we could support from the way you looked
- 18:53at the world. I do think the security and the
- 18:55privacy are two different concepts.
- 18:59And here's what I mean by that. Like, so we're collecting this
- 19:02information and then we have to secure it.
- 19:05That's OK. So we're collecting the
- 19:07information and all those checks and consents, and that's the
- 19:12progressive profiling. That's all about the user
- 19:15experience, right? The security is really the GDPR.
- 19:20Now I'm saying this and I'm OK with being proven wrong or told
- 19:23I'm wrong. But to me, when I looked at all
- 19:25the GDPR and I haven't looked at it in a while, but all the major
- 19:28fines were data breaches and all the data that got sent out the
- 19:32door. So if I'm collecting Jeff's
- 19:34phone number and then I'm deleting it because I no longer
- 19:38need it, now I'm just keeping it because I'm a hoarder of data.
- 19:42That's a that's what we're trying to prevent, right?
- 19:44So now I get breached and instead of having 200,000 phone
- 19:49numbers, I have 2000 phone numbers.
- 19:52My fine won't be as bad at least I don't know.
- 19:56Does that make? Am I?
- 19:58Am I? One point is correct, most of
- 20:02the fine is on data protection and not so much on the privacy
- 20:05part. That's a funny thing.
- 20:06So I mean, and obviously the one goes hand in hand, but if you
- 20:09have all your data consented and you lose it, I mean, it's still
- 20:13a data breach, right? So, and what is one of, I would
- 20:17say flaws almost is that we're not looking at how you collect
- 20:21your data, but really actually looking at, OK, have you made
- 20:24sure it's not being corrupted or it's not being stolen or there's
- 20:27no breach here? This is where most of the fines
- 20:30are that the mentality is changing as well.
- 20:33I think the good news is that people are more aware now of
- 20:36what what's being doing with data.
- 20:38I also still believe that if you give me a nice present, I'll
- 20:42give you everything I have. And that's obviously This is why
- 20:45these kind of legislation has to come in place because sometimes
- 20:48we need to assist people to be aware what to do.
- 20:51I mean, I don't think we should pamper people because I don't
- 20:54believe that's that's what we need to do.
- 20:55But we should at least create awareness.
- 20:57And this is what you do, friends with us asking the question at
- 20:59the right moment. We're now going to use this
- 21:01number, going to store it somewhere for this purpose.
- 21:04By the way, if you want to change it, you can change it
- 21:06somewhere else. Obviously, nobody does it.
- 21:09That's the other side of some privacy needs.
- 21:11Or every once in a while check what's being stored.
- 21:13But you and me as a normal consumer, we still leave all our
- 21:16data outside. So I think that still is a bit
- 21:19of the challenge that that needs to be assorted.
- 21:21Maybe we should be a bit more proactive as as a company, OK,
- 21:24we've stored this information from you.
- 21:26Do you still want us to store it, yes or no?
- 21:29Which obviously is a bit difficult sometimes because
- 21:31people do like to have the data. How much of a challenge are
- 21:35abandoned accounts because you just, you know, you struck a
- 21:38nerve there with me where people sign up for services, myself
- 21:41included, and then they just stop using the service, but they
- 21:44never actually go back and delete their account or change,
- 21:49you know, information that might be sensitive.
- 21:50Jim, I would say it's a business challenge.
- 21:52I mean, so if you don't mind as a business, that's not a
- 21:54problem. If you mind about the quality of
- 21:57the people are using your service and if they are
- 21:59repeatable users, yes or no, then obviously it makes tons of
- 22:02sense to to clean it up. I mean, frankly, we can see
- 22:05everything. We can do a query on how much
- 22:08use for the account, which account will be dormant for the
- 22:10next experience. But if I mean we can give you
- 22:14the information, but if that ends with the action, then so
- 22:18it's a business decision. I would say to clean it up.
- 22:21I think depending on the kind of service you find on what
- 22:23account. So it's a very lightweight
- 22:25thing, people just if you just need something to get something
- 22:28else, you may just want to put something out and you've got a
- 22:31fake phone number, all that kind of data.
- 22:34I mean again, it comes into thoughtfully thinking how you
- 22:38engage and what you want to get out of it, if the data actually
- 22:40is the right data and if there's a value or non value in the
- 22:44number of accounts. And there's this balance, right,
- 22:46that you have to really kind of straddle is, you know, if you're
- 22:50a company, you want to have as many customers as possible and
- 22:53customer data. But if you were to get breached,
- 22:56you want to minimize the risk of that.
- 22:57And the more customer and customer data you have the
- 23:02potential for the risk along from the breach perspective.
- 23:05So how do you balance that? So, OK, well we want to show we
- 23:08had 100 million customers, but if those 100,000,050 millionaire
- 23:12dormant, that can be a problem as well.
- 23:15Well, yeah, that's that's another angle to actually make
- 23:18sure aware that it doesn't make sense to have so many dormant
- 23:20accounts. I mean, I don't think that's the
- 23:22key driver for for businesses today, but I think it's much
- 23:26more. I mean we like to look at from
- 23:27how you actually grow your business and look at the top
- 23:29line up much and that actually don't want accounts overly do
- 23:33not mean anything. I mean there's a bit of a cost
- 23:35attached, but that's not a lot. But this is a risk which you may
- 23:38run into. But in the end, the value of
- 23:40having accounts is that accounts interact with you and do
- 23:42business with you. Otherwise, well, what's the
- 23:44purpose? That's the difference between an
- 23:46engaged customer and just a name and a name in a list somewhere.
- 23:50That really. Isn't doesn't really care.
- 23:51Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think when I looked at
- 23:54the the fines that can be levied from a GDPR perspective, I mean
- 24:00the I mean the interesting of it is like it could almost shut
- 24:03down your company. Yeah.
- 24:04And it's that I think that's the one thing that's really
- 24:06interesting for GDPRS is different for how we typically
- 24:08see things in the US. It's like a fixed amount for GPR
- 24:11though, it's a percentage of your revenue or something like
- 24:14that, right? And it's a material percentage
- 24:17of your revenue as well. But if you're in a multinational
- 24:21company, right and it's not limited to the the revenue that
- 24:26you get in Europe. So if you're maybe an American
- 24:30based firm doing business around the world and you have a breach
- 24:34and you lose all this data for European citizens, I mean, you
- 24:39could have, you know, massive billions of EUR and fines.
- 24:45Yes. And obviously that that's one
- 24:46side, but I mean think about what that does with trust in
- 24:49your Brent that's. True.
- 24:51I think that's even more devastating.
- 24:53So I mean, I think proper governance from any company
- 24:56would mean less protected very well, because if we lose trust,
- 25:00well, I think that's even farther away from being paying
- 25:02off with a fine. So, OK, so we brought it up to
- 25:06like 2016. Yeah.
- 25:09So keep. Keep going.
- 25:11Yeah. So, I mean, so the process was a
- 25:13game changer in focus on this thing.
- 25:15We also saw the market change. Obviously we infused this, this
- 25:18constant and the friction experience, all that kind of
- 25:21stuff. Fast forward a bit to early 20s,
- 25:25what we saw obviously is that the market space was changing.
- 25:28So I'm not talking entrepreneurial me.
- 25:30I was looking at, OK, I mean this is a time to either go big
- 25:34or go home and go big for me really meant, I mean there were
- 25:37so many sub skill companies like ours fighting against the big
- 25:41ones. So for us the way to do it is
- 25:44OK, find a buy and build strategy, bring a lot of these
- 25:47companies together and even I guess with most of my
- 25:50competitive colleagues and we had a good plan.
- 25:53So the idea was 2021 to more or less bring a lot of smaller
- 25:57companies together, integrate and make a platform play from it
- 25:59and have something which is not only European based, but really
- 26:03global based until a company came by in the Netherlands
- 26:06called Tallis. Well, Tallis is not necessarily
- 26:09the most known quantity in the world on IM, but they've been
- 26:12around for quite some time. And obviously in Europe they
- 26:15were a bit well known because it's a huge company as a 20
- 26:18billion company and and D face, but it's also 20,000 people in
- 26:23digital identity and security. So I mean, nice combination of
- 26:26both. You may not know, but all the
- 26:29Eastern technology is from tireless.
- 26:31Half of the bank cards are from Tireless.
- 26:34If you look at driver's license, electronic drivers, Eids, border
- 26:37control, Paymetrics, Dallas, and they had a portfolio around
- 26:42identity and access management. So when I was doing my own play
- 26:45on integrating all these different things and we looked
- 26:48at user journey orchestration, so we started touching things
- 26:52like wallets, Eids, validated attributes, identifier, IDV,
- 26:58secure access. I certainly found that Tireless
- 27:00Wallace had all of that somewhere in house and it was an
- 27:05interesting kind of realization because it was like a candy shop
- 27:08identity next management technologies.
- 27:11And that made me wonder, I've got my plan here.
- 27:13It's going to mean the next 3-4 years we're going to integrate
- 27:15small companies and so on and so forth.
- 27:18Or our Siam, which really is an orchestration authorization
- 27:23engine takes all these different building blocks which are really
- 27:26within this company. And I'll canmore or less have an
- 27:29internal buy and build strategy here from a portfolio which has
- 27:33proven itself and which has a global play, so.
- 27:36One thing I wanted to ask you about, so Jeff and I were at a
- 27:39smaller firm for I was there for 9 years.
- 27:43Jeff, you were there for probably five years and it wound
- 27:47up being acquired. And I think one of the things
- 27:50that really jumped out to me is the importance of that cultural
- 27:54fit. Did you find because you really
- 27:57need to keep especially your star players, but really it's
- 28:02continuity for the whole company because the star players all
- 28:05care about the the players, you know, who maybe aren't the
- 28:09senior executives. But I mean, really like that
- 28:13cultural fit is so key. What did you did you come to
- 28:17that same realization and how did it work out?
- 28:20Yeah, it is a very good question because obviously everybody
- 28:23asked me why, when are you leaving tireless?
- 28:24Because you're a serial entrepreneur.
- 28:26You've you've got your first boss here since you started
- 28:28working. The answer to that is AI like it
- 28:33and B, everybody understood that there are so many proper
- 28:38building blocks that actually really start making sense if we
- 28:40bring it together. So although it's it's a huge
- 28:43company, the drive from above, but also from a lot of people
- 28:48that actually were responsible for the different products was
- 28:50OK, if we can bring this forward, if there's somebody
- 28:52that brings in the energy to do it, let's see where this goes.
- 28:56I'm very firm believe that you need to start with a vision and
- 28:59secondly, then bring the team along.
- 29:01I mean, without a vision, you will not be able to bring the
- 29:03team along in a big company also need to be in a position to do
- 29:06so. So I'm now VP, I am.
- 29:08So that means that more or less all these different parts
- 29:12reporting to me and maybe a bit of the startup mentality is not
- 29:17taking no for Grant for granted. Just go out, talk to people and
- 29:22make them enthusiastic and see where things go.
- 29:24So I have to say within times, all the stuff that needed to be
- 29:28done to actually make it a success was in place.
- 29:31Then the question is, will it in the end work out because the
- 29:33devil is in the details. Well, we are today.
- 29:35You will see it when you're on the exhibition floor here.
- 29:38A lot of different technologies that we have within Talos,
- 29:41inclusive biometrics, inclusive identification, all these things
- 29:45connected with RM portfolio hardware, software, logical,
- 29:48physical. We're going to demonstrate down
- 29:50here in the exhibition area. And it is because everybody felt
- 29:54it's now time to connect all the pieces and Siam was the
- 29:58connecting element. It's the glue between all of
- 30:01that kind of stuff. So did I encounter different
- 30:06cultures? Yes, of course we encountered
- 30:08it. I'm also encountering that in
- 30:10different places in the world. But I also have to say that
- 30:12everybody bought into division and did the best.
- 30:17And I mean, I think the biggest proof that we're doing the right
- 30:19thing is that we're able to attract talent.
- 30:20I mean, I think this is usually where things fail.
- 30:23I mean, oh, that's a nice story. I'm not going to work there.
- 30:26I'm going to be interested to see a lot of what you're talking
- 30:28about, but Jeff always gives me a hard time about being a A
- 30:31fanboy. Really what I'm a fanboy about
- 30:34is the B to B piece. Because to me, this is my first,
- 30:41you know, entry into the identity space was back in 2003.
- 30:46I was responsible for at, at a company responsible for pulling
- 30:50together all of our dealer facing applications.
- 30:56What we are lacking was a common identity across all of them and
- 31:00it's that B to B scenario. So we had dealership network and
- 31:03it was the dealerships that went in to manage their own user.
- 31:08So we had six different applications that we started
- 31:11with. Each one had their own user
- 31:13management interface. We had to get it down to one and
- 31:17it was hard. There's a lot of custom
- 31:18development required and over the years I've been waiting for
- 31:22someone's going to take this problem and fix it with a
- 31:26product. And yet what I continue to see
- 31:30was the innovation on the authentication side has been
- 31:35unbelievable. I mean, there's many different
- 31:38solutions out there that I'm very impressed by, but I still
- 31:44searched for who's going to solve this B to B user
- 31:49management problem. Because here's the, here's the
- 31:51thing, it's like the single sign on piece.
- 31:54I'm not going to say it was easy to solve because I wasn't part
- 31:57of solving it, but it was, you know, most companies don't have
- 32:01a huge variance in terms of how they authenticate.
- 32:04But when you talk about delegated administration within
- 32:08B2B, there's a huge variance. And so the, the approach that I
- 32:15saw the most was companies would go out there and build an
- 32:18application to solve this specific problem that is like
- 32:23one of the very few areas in enterprise IT where people will
- 32:28go out and build their own applications for anymore.
- 32:31And so when I saw that you guys would basically build a product
- 32:35around that, I was like, OK, I really need to dig in because
- 32:39like to me, even you can't even take the basics for granted.
- 32:45Like what I call a dealer or a franchise or a brokerage,
- 32:52another firm that's in the exact same space may call it something
- 32:55different and then they may have different hierarchical models.
- 33:00And let me start with the question, why did you even want
- 33:04to solve that problem? It's such a hard problem to
- 33:06solve. Why don't you just pick
- 33:08something easier to solve and and just focus on doing the best
- 33:13job at that? Yeah.
- 33:14Well, I mean, that's a question I've asked myself a couple of
- 33:16times in the past 25 years. Well, why didn't do something
- 33:19easy? Because I've never been in an
- 33:20easy space. I think it's the, it's almost
- 33:23like the only white space left in our field.
- 33:26I also believe this is the future white space.
- 33:28So I mean, then if that's the case and obviously it's logical
- 33:32for us for us to jump in, let's break down B to B bits to what
- 33:36it really is because as you rightly said, it's a lot of
- 33:38different things. So it is business customers,
- 33:40that's simple. I mean, it's somebody ordering
- 33:42something in your company on behalf of another company.
- 33:44Still there's some mandation behind it because I mean, a
- 33:46company cannot audit a person within the company will order.
- 33:49So secondly, it's usually the ecosystems that you need to
- 33:53manage, which can be somewhere where you're in R&D department.
- 33:55But later on when there's a supply chain, there's what we
- 33:58found, those will be tons of different people.
- 34:00If it's capital goods, most likely afterwards there's also a
- 34:03service ecosystem to manage. I mean, when the ecosystems get
- 34:05big and then obviously the challenge is very big as well,
- 34:08then a third more or less main case is what we indeed say it's
- 34:11the dealers, the brokers, agents, the business to business
- 34:15to consumer most of the time or sometimes business to business
- 34:18to business to consumer or consumer in the end.
- 34:20So I mean, these all these kind of things you somehow need to be
- 34:24able to cover with product capabilities.
- 34:26That's obviously a challenge. We've focused on that from 2020
- 34:30on what's more or less so very strong capability in delegation
- 34:34because this is where it needs needs to start.
- 34:36It's a different thing also from the IGA side because you're not
- 34:39talking about the scope, you know, you're partly talking
- 34:41about the scope of people you do not have access to and they will
- 34:44be invited to, for instance, new systems that you give to make
- 34:50available to others. Second, critical capability is
- 34:54what we call find grade authorization.
- 34:57And the other thing which we typically see in a lot of these
- 34:59kind of scenarios is distributed identity.
- 35:01So you're using the identity which is outside of what you
- 35:04control. So then orchestration comes into
- 35:07place as well. These are the modules we have to
- 35:10actually cope with the complexity.
- 35:11And obviously it depends on which kind of customer scenario
- 35:15B to B to C insurance company is different than what we for
- 35:18instance, do for the European Central Bank, just to give you
- 35:20that example. I mean, any bank has to login in
- 35:24the in the ECB, but it's not a bank login, it's somebody.
- 35:27So there will be a super use that super user can assign other
- 35:30users that may actually be super used to assign other users.
- 35:32That's right. So you see how far away from
- 35:35your direct visibility of control it is.
- 35:38And still you need to start checking, OK, other users there
- 35:42been invited to get access to the system.
- 35:44Have they actually accepted invitation, yes or no?
- 35:47Hey, we see people are no longer using it.
- 35:49So what does it mean? I mean, is the person gone
- 35:50because you don't know if you're at the ECB site?
- 35:53Another very critical one which we see is on supply chain.
- 35:56So let me just give you an example of a, an airplane
- 36:00manufacturer. More than 70% of a plane is
- 36:03manufactured by somebody else in the company itself.
- 36:06Think about it, we're not talking about 5000 people from
- 36:08outside. Assembling right?
- 36:10100,000 Yeah, because the cockpit is being built by
- 36:12somebody else. Well, sometimes in this case,
- 36:16but anything in the airplane is we built, a lot of things are
- 36:18built by other people. And the other complexity here is
- 36:21that they do not have to have access to that airplane in the
- 36:24final assembly line all the time.
- 36:25They need to have it for these two days.
- 36:27And this guy is working in the cockpit, so he's got a clearance
- 36:31on top level security. The other person installing the
- 36:34toilet in the back of the plane has a different security
- 36:36clearance and they all work in the same hole and walk in the
- 36:39same hole. So, and this is another thing
- 36:41which I like from being with Talas, this is, I'm not going to
- 36:44promote too much, but this is something which actually makes
- 36:46the story complete is it doesn't stop just with the physiological
- 36:51part. This actually goes into the
- 36:53physical. So actually we add to the
- 36:55delegation model things like wearables that you can use so
- 36:58you can walk hands free to instinct and you've got
- 37:00clearance because you are the guy that has to go into the
- 37:02cockpit and it's all being feathered.
- 37:04And I mean, we've done the verification part with a
- 37:07variable to authenticate, authenticate yourself and go in.
- 37:10That same variable will be used by Jim three days later.
- 37:13So we obviously have been connected to another delegation
- 37:16model. So we actually combine all these
- 37:18kind of things in a full proposition.
- 37:21And I mean, I now make it sound very simple, but if you think
- 37:24about different use cases, the different types of people, the
- 37:27different kind of rules and roles that you have to somehow
- 37:30fit in the authorizations, which are critical here obviously, and
- 37:33the people that actually manage the authorizations.
- 37:35I mean, it's a very very very complex problem, yet not easy be
- 37:39solved by build yourself either. The crazy part is though, it's
- 37:43like 1 product can fill that scenario, but it also could be a
- 37:49fast food franchise model or insurance brokerage model.
- 37:55It's really all falls within this B to B space.
- 37:58It's a company interacting with it, with customers which are not
- 38:04it. The actions are taken by
- 38:06individual human beings, but it's on behalf of a company.
- 38:10The relationships also, you know, the relationship of that
- 38:15fast food company is really with the franchise.
- 38:20It's the contract. Now all the people who are
- 38:24acting on behalf of the franchise are operating within
- 38:28that contract. They're agents of that company.
- 38:30It's. Yeah.
- 38:31And there's one constituency which we didn't discuss in this
- 38:34context, we also use the same technologies for gig workers.
- 38:38And that's interesting because I mean, what's going to happen
- 38:40with this traditional employee, which is starting with HR,
- 38:43whereas most of the company now actually have people that do not
- 38:45start with HR, but they work for them for a gig for.
- 38:48So think about seasonal labor, think about all gig works that
- 38:50work for multiple companies. That's quite often bring their
- 38:53own identity. So again, you need to
- 38:55orchestrate step outs to what they do, bring wallet technology
- 38:59and all that kind of stuff. And let me give you a very nice
- 39:01example. Again, it's a bring your own van
- 39:04for a post company. So these people around Christmas
- 39:07New Year need more people to drive around and deliver
- 39:10parcels. So there's a website where you
- 39:12register. Then you add some of your
- 39:14identity details, which will be a step out to a an ID provider.
- 39:19Then obviously you need to prove that you've got a driver's
- 39:21license. Again, step out to a driver's
- 39:23license registry. Then you need to prove you
- 39:25actually have the van. So there's a step out to a car
- 39:28registry then the smaller stuff you need to do.
- 39:30So I mean, if you want to orchestrate these kind of
- 39:33things. And by the way, this person then
- 39:34after all this fetting will be working on this one distribution
- 39:38center on this corner of the country where actually the
- 39:40person that actually needed that one has a delegated
- 39:43responsibility to actually start this process.
- 39:45So again, it all comes together. Same.
- 39:48If you look at, for instance, you talked about restaurants.
- 39:49We've got a very nice example in the UK.
- 39:52I mean, they've got 33,000 pubs in restaurant, but there's a
- 39:55huge amount of seasonal label. I mean, this is not high
- 39:57security compared to the airline line manufacturer.
- 40:01This is high turnover. And again, it's something you
- 40:03need to manage. Yeah.
- 40:05So interesting that it's like the internal or enterprise
- 40:13identity management has become more commoditized over time.
- 40:17And the reason why I think that that that was enabled was people
- 40:25started just transitioning to these best practices.
- 40:29The authoritative source for employees is here.
- 40:32Maybe it's also for non employees, but maybe you have a
- 40:36different data set for non employees and then you get them
- 40:39into a centralized system and provision out their access to
- 40:43use tickets or connectors. But that starts to break down
- 40:48when you get into the CIAM model.
- 40:52So here's, let me turn that into a question.
- 40:55So you have the CIM model, but you still have to here's what
- 41:00happened over time is that companies have taken what their
- 41:04business processes with their customers.
- 41:07They've been hesitant to change that, right, Because it's a
- 41:11model that works. And when you only get one chance
- 41:14to mess up with your customers, right?
- 41:16So they take these processes from technology to technology
- 41:21and have to customize and customize, which I think is
- 41:25ultimately a death sentence. And what I want to know is like,
- 41:30is that something you talk about with executives as you talk to
- 41:34them about, hey, this is the approach that you should take
- 41:38when moving your CIM program forward?
- 41:41Or what are some of the other things, maybe in addition to
- 41:44that, that you know, become your main talking points?
- 41:47Yeah, this obviously is one because, well, you mentioned
- 41:51commodity. I would say B2E use cases are
- 41:54commodity. Everybody knows this for the
- 41:55last 30 years. I mean, is it very different
- 41:58from 30 years ago? Now technology's concept
- 41:59different, but what you want to do give your employees access to
- 42:03information is different, is more or less the same.
- 42:06Siam on a very simple case, I mean a website and having
- 42:11consumers is pretty commoditized as well because we all can do
- 42:15it. It really gets more complex when
- 42:17you talk about this B2B kind of engagement or where there's a
- 42:20lot of other components that where there's an Omni channel
- 42:23kind of approach. So what we've seen especially in
- 42:26the B2B side more than even in any of the others is the do it
- 42:29yourself. And it is because we would just
- 42:31want to mimic our specific project procedures and processes
- 42:36into the IT that we deliver, which works.
- 42:39If you've got a use IT department, you know these guys
- 42:41are here to stay. It doesn't work when your AIT
- 42:45budget is shrinking because people want to start using
- 42:47different kind of services. I mean that has to come with
- 42:50accepting some kind of standard. And then the question is where
- 42:55is the trade off between the configuration that you can do
- 42:58with systems like ours, which actually can go pretty far,
- 43:01maybe amends some of the ways you engage things and accept the
- 43:04fact that that is still better than being completely dependent
- 43:07on bespoke, custom and all these things.
- 43:11So the further you go up to the chain in the company, the more
- 43:14they realize that there's also future proof as being a key
- 43:18element for what needs to be done.
- 43:20I mean, is the gap is too big. Obviously then the gap is too
- 43:23big. But I would say in quite a lot
- 43:26of situations you can actually work with the current identity
- 43:29fabrics that are around. So we're here at Identiverse.
- 43:33What do you get out of a conference like this?
- 43:37I mean, for sure for me, the different question for my team
- 43:42and obviously we like to engage with customers.
- 43:43We like to engage with some of the partners that we have a lot
- 43:46of partners here in the US that's good.
- 43:49It's also good to see where the industry is going.
- 43:52Having said that, I mean that also happens in interactions
- 43:56between the companies itself. We obviously hope to get
- 43:59commercial success from this, but I really like to see what
- 44:02the others are doing and engage a bit with, I would like like to
- 44:06say, competitors or some companies which are very close
- 44:09to us, because I think I mentioned the word integratable
- 44:11quite a lot of time. There's a lot of technology here
- 44:15exposed to us as well, which again may be a good integration
- 44:19for us going forward. What's an area of identity that
- 44:23you're really bullish on right now?
- 44:26Well. I mean, the bullish part is the
- 44:28B2B site. And then obviously, there's one
- 44:30thing which everybody talks about is AI and why what I like
- 44:36from AI is not necessarily, again, the security things that
- 44:39we're trying to do with it, because we've been trying to
- 44:41deal with it. I really like, again, keyword
- 44:43conversational part of it. So use the chat, but use the
- 44:47question, the conversation method to actually get into
- 44:50data. And I would say use it for all
- 44:53user groups. So I mean, if I'm a user of
- 44:58system, I would like to ask, OK, what actually do you have on me
- 45:02and get information back rather than starting to search
- 45:04somewhere. I mean, this is the kind of
- 45:05interaction which obviously I love as if you've been talking
- 45:08about conversations all the time.
- 45:09Something similar you can do on AP testing.
- 45:12OK, we, we've got this model and we've got that other user
- 45:16journey. Which one works better and where
- 45:18do we see differences? Is that in the country?
- 45:19I mean, and that kind of information cutting back in
- 45:21natural language, obviously, or maybe say we're getting this
- 45:24back in financial terms or in a business terms.
- 45:26I mean, that makes tons of sense.
- 45:28So I think AI can be great help for us in these kind of things
- 45:32as well. So I'd like to take AI to the
- 45:34conversation part and frictionless part on top of what
- 45:38we can do with that to detect anomalies and that kind of
- 45:41better, Yeah, security profile out of it.
- 45:44Yeah, that's the way I see it as well.
- 45:46I mean, I think one of the big benefits is when AI gets, you
- 45:50know, the same kind of AI that you use with Open Open AI or
- 45:55ChatGPT and the Google AI or Gemini is being able to go in
- 45:59there and have an iterative conversation through natural
- 46:03language that's going to enable non-technical people to ask
- 46:07business questions and get real answers that they can understand
- 46:12and then iterate on. I do think we've got a bit of a
- 46:14challenge on I think it's going to be a odd, almost like prompt
- 46:19engineering. Where do you start and do we get
- 46:22the right answer to the question we're asking?
- 46:24And obviously AI sometimes can just go in the other direction.
- 46:26I've did some some of the try out over the weekend myself as
- 46:29well. It's interesting to see, but I
- 46:31mean, we're going to get there because this gets smarter and
- 46:33smarter. So I think this hope Co pilots
- 46:35the the conversational part is going somewhere.
- 46:38It's also fair to say, I think at this moment we're in not even
- 46:41prototype within proto hype situation.
- 46:44So everybody, it's a second buzzword or we've seen some
- 46:47buzzwords in our industry have blockchain CEO trust.
- 46:49I mean, I had some shared trust coffee today, I mean. 100%
- 46:54extra. AI, yeah, actually exactly.
- 46:56But I think AI is a different dimension to it because it's
- 46:59going to change fundamentally how we how we work with our
- 47:03systems. And I think that's that's a
- 47:04great addition. Obviously it also going to
- 47:07impose some threats because I mean it works on the trust side.
- 47:10So what will it do with trust? I'm not sure if we're talking to
- 47:14Jim or he's a deep fake while I was in the same room.
- 47:16So we know it is, but I mean, So what does that do for instance
- 47:19with biometrics, I mean how is that going to change over time?
- 47:24Is it, I mean so to impose all kind of new, new things to us
- 47:30both in security as well as opportunity side?
- 47:32Anybody who listens to the show knows I'm very bullish on AI.
- 47:35So there will be obviously challenge to go along with it.
- 47:38But I think I think your toy right the word I don't want to
- 47:41pick from what you just as fundamental.
- 47:43I think it's a fundamental change in the way that we
- 47:44approach not only building solutions, but answering
- 47:48questions that people are going to have.
- 47:52How great would it be to have a conversation with your identity
- 47:55platform? I mean, it sounds very nerdy to
- 47:57say that, but to be able to get the information out of it in a
- 48:00way would say, hey, you know, what can X organization do with
- 48:04my data? What have I, what pieces of my
- 48:07privacy have I, you know, whatever questions I want to ask
- 48:11it, right? How can it be used and to get
- 48:13back an actual answer that the user can understand is game
- 48:17changing. And you're not talking to the IM
- 48:19system, you're talking from a user perspective to your portal,
- 48:22to your service, to your app, to your taxi driver.
- 48:25I mean, that's obviously how it works.
- 48:27And that's what I like from what you see AI can now do.
- 48:30I think that that's one of the big game changers for, I mean,
- 48:33there's also what we invest in right now because we need to see
- 48:35how we can quickly integrate that into into the conversations
- 48:38that we have with the customers from a techie enablement
- 48:41perspective. So it's my turn to do the yeah.
- 48:46You want to do like an overrated underrated like?
- 48:48What do you? Want to have so we always go out
- 48:50with a lighter note question. And so my what I've been pushing
- 48:55for for a while is overrated or underrated.
- 48:58Those are two options and the topic Is Las Vegas overrated or
- 49:05underrated? Oh yeah, I think for me it's
- 49:09overrated. Why do you say that?
- 49:15We talked about artificial in terms of intelligence.
- 49:18So I mean, it's obviously it's insane if you if you fly in,
- 49:23flying over the desert and you see what's happening here.
- 49:25And I and I see how much energy we consume, how much what do we
- 49:29consume here? I mean, so obviously it's
- 49:31fantastic that we have this this crazy place where we can come
- 49:34together as people. But yeah, in the end, after two
- 49:39days of walking around, it's done for me because then the new
- 49:41stuff is is out of it and then you start looking at maybe a
- 49:45little bit of the insanity of it.
- 49:47So but if I leave home and talk to people and say I'm going to
- 49:51Las Vegas, everybody says, oh, that's fantastic.
- 49:55So what's really true? I, I guess I fall on the other
- 49:58side. I think it's underrated only
- 50:00because I think it's such a well built town for conferences.
- 50:04I could care less about gambling or anything like that, right?
- 50:09Drinking. I'm, I'm not a fan of like
- 50:11either. I don't do anything but for to
- 50:14be able to come to a town that is you never have to look for a
- 50:16hotel room. There's plenty of them.
- 50:18There's plenty of spaces, great spaces.
- 50:20There's plenty of places to have conversations after the fact,
- 50:23restaurants, little nooks, speakeasies like Jim and I went
- 50:27to last night, right? Things like that where you can
- 50:30have a good time, but you're not, I guess you don't, you
- 50:34don't have to be in a situation where you're kind of the hustle
- 50:37and bustle. It's a very interesting town.
- 50:38It's very efficient too. A lot of the water usage here is
- 50:43definitely recycled and things like that, but it is definitely
- 50:46like an act of defiance. They have a city like this in
- 50:49the middle of the desert. It doesn't make sense and yet it
- 50:52for me it works. It's easy to get to.
- 50:55There's plenty of things to do, see and, you know, work through
- 50:59conversations or whatever, but only because I don't care about
- 51:02gambling or, you know, drinking or anything like that.
- 51:05I'm. Definitely in the underrated
- 51:07camp. And so first I have to have to
- 51:10justify that with, I think a lot of people hate Las Vegas.
- 51:13I thought you did. No, I've never been on the I
- 51:17hate Las Vegas side. I've had sometimes where it's
- 51:19like you're there for a week and by the end of the week you're
- 51:22just like, Get Me Out of here. But usually that's because my
- 51:27biggest knock on Las Vegas is how expensive it is.
- 51:32If you realize you've been here for seven days and you've spent
- 51:352500 or $3000, it's like unless you're like Uber rich like
- 51:41that's you're going to be like, wow, that's I spend a lot of
- 51:44money to be there. You know, there's all the $10
- 51:47bottles of water and things like that.
- 51:49But here's the thing about Las Vegas.
- 51:51So I've been to a lot of cities around the world, but I've been
- 51:55to most of the big cities in the United States.
- 51:58There's nothing else like Las Vegas, right?
- 51:59So it is completely unique. The other thing is you get these
- 52:06epic things in Las Vegas. And one was one that I visited
- 52:11yesterday called the Sphere. So we all know the sphere now,
- 52:14right? You drive, you fly in, you see
- 52:16this big ball and you're like, what is that thing?
- 52:19And it's so cool looking. Wait till you go inside.
- 52:23You go inside and watch like this movie that they have now
- 52:26and you will be completely blown away.
- 52:29And again, it's like only something they would do in Las
- 52:32Vegas because you have so many tourists coming in.
- 52:36Then finally, I'll say what Jeff said, which is it's a perfect
- 52:40town for conferences and they try and put a conference in like
- 52:43Dallas or even Orlando. To me, it's like super
- 52:47underwhelming. There's so many drawbacks and
- 52:50it's not laid out for conferences.
- 52:52You almost have to rent a car or you come here.
- 52:56You do not need to rent a car. In fact, I think you're crazy if
- 52:59you do rent a car, that's just yeah, you just Uber around and
- 53:03or walk and get your exercise in.
- 53:07Like, I don't know. So I'm a clearly, you know, Las
- 53:10Vegas is underrated. We're going to change your mind,
- 53:13Danny. Well, let's do that, then.
- 53:15Let's go out. We'll do that tonight.
- 53:16All right, why don't we go ahead and wrap it up for for this
- 53:19episode? Danny, thank you very much for
- 53:20taking the time. I know you're a busy guy.
- 53:22You got a lot of stuff going on and we're going to see you
- 53:24probably tonight at the event that Talus and RSM are are
- 53:28working on together. So with that, we'll leave it for
- 53:31this week. We'll have links in our show
- 53:32notes for people to check out Talus when welcome to link with
- 53:35you on LinkedIn as well as Jim and I.
- 53:38We're on the web idacpodcast.com.
- 53:40We're on YouTube. Jim, I'm getting the I'm getting
- 53:43the plug in.youtube.com slash at IDAC podcast.
- 53:48Or you could just go to YouTube and search for identity at the
- 53:52center, but you won't. Have to type that much.
- 53:54Yeah, on the web, we're pretty close on the identity search
- 53:57rankings. Now we're working on YouTube,
- 54:00Twitter. What are we on?
- 54:02Twitter IDAC podcast and I of course IDAC podcast and then
- 54:07Macedon IDAC podcast at infosec dot.
- 54:09Exchange How many connections do we have on Mastodon 3?
- 54:12No, we have a few. There's a few people.
- 54:15I think it's, it was the refuge from Twitter about a year ago.
- 54:19I would say when Elon took over and started to cause havoc over
- 54:23at X or Twitter or whatever. It's kind of died down though by
- 54:27now, right? No, it's still, it's still
- 54:29going. I mean the Fetaverse is they
- 54:32call it. I never used it.
- 54:34I know you don't. I do all the things.
- 54:36I really don't care. I thought it was actually
- 54:38running the the Mastodon account.
- 54:40All right, let's leave it there. Thanks everybody for listening
- 54:43and or watching. And yeah, we'll talk to
- 54:45everybody in the next one. You've been listening to
- 54:50Identity at the Center. We hope you've enjoyed the show.
- 54:54Make sure to like, rate and review, and we'll be back soon.
- 54:59But in the meantime, hit the website at
- 55:01identity@thecenter.com. See you next time on Identity at
- 55:07the Center.