Latest / Identity at the Center / #265 - IDAC Sponsor Spotlight - Veza
Transcript
- 0:05This is identity at the center. If it has anything to do with
- 0:10IAM, this is the go to podcast now your hosts Jim McDonald and
- 0:17Jeff Stedman. Welcome to the Identity at the
- 0:23Center podcast. I'm Jeff and that's Jim.
- 0:24Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
- 0:26Oh, not so bad yourself. I'm doing great man.
- 0:29We're here doing another sponsor spotlight episode and that these
- 0:33are fantastic and I'm really excited with the one that we got
- 0:37today. I mean you know we we've, I
- 0:40think we kind of hit the jackpot in terms of what we're going to
- 0:43talk about today is a company called Visa.
- 0:47I don't want to steal the Thunder of the show, but I guess
- 0:49if you if you saw the the title of the podcast, you know already
- 0:53we're talking to Rich from Visa. But it's like this up and coming
- 0:59company, right? And it's like it can't be
- 1:02ignored for sure. And to me, it's just like, wow,
- 1:06like, we're going to talk about so many great things today.
- 1:09Yeah. So I guess you've already
- 1:10spoiled it. We're talking with Vasa, but
- 1:12want to make it clear, right, this is a sponsored episode.
- 1:15We actually work with our sponsors on these and kind of
- 1:17come up collaboratively of how we want to develop a show that
- 1:20we think will be entertaining, informative, but also get us you
- 1:24know deeper into specific viewpoints, specific solutions,
- 1:27something that we try to stay away from on our normal shows.
- 1:31But this gives us an opportunity to talk with you know, really
- 1:33smart people and really ask specific questions that are
- 1:36maybe more product focused than we normally would where we're
- 1:39really talking big ideas, maybe stuff like that.
- 1:42Not that we want to talk big ideas here, but gives us, give
- 1:45us a little more specificity. We can kind of talk through
- 1:47things. Yeah, I I didn't want to give
- 1:49away the identity. What I really wanted to say was
- 1:52we got the man with the golden pipes back on the show excited
- 1:57to to hear, just to hear him talk because like he has like a
- 2:00Grover Washington type of voice. Yeah, definitely good pipes.
- 2:05So today's sponsor is Beza. They're the identity security
- 2:09company. They think that they've cracked
- 2:11the code on cybersecurity's hardest question.
- 2:13Who can take what action on what data?
- 2:16Question mark. Let's find out more with our
- 2:18guest. His name is Rich Dan Leicher.
- 2:20He's the chief strategist at Vasa.
- 2:22Welcome back to the show, Rich. Thanks, Jeff.
- 2:24Thanks Jim. It's it's great to be here.
- 2:26And now I was just, I was just all the time when you were
- 2:28talking and on my intro, I was hoping my voice wouldn't crack
- 2:31right out of the gate here. Well, see, that's The thing is,
- 2:34I do the editing so I can insert little imperfections if I need
- 2:37to, but I'm not going to do that because I'm absolutely jealous.
- 2:39You've got a great you've got great radio pipes, as they like
- 2:42to say in the Fizz, right? Thank you.
- 2:44As long as as long again as you don't, you don't tell me I have
- 2:47a face for radio, then I'm good. Now Jim and I have that covered
- 2:51for sure. We have faces for radio and
- 2:53voices for a silent movie is what I like to say.
- 2:56Rich, you've been with us before.
- 2:58You were with us in Episode 231 back in September of 2023.
- 3:02We had a conversation about authorization.
- 3:04We also found out really about your kind of background there.
- 3:06So tradition would have, we would ask that question.
- 3:09But we've already asked you that.
- 3:10How did you get into the identity?
- 3:12We want to hear that story go back to episode 231.
- 3:14Why don't we get right into Vasa itself.
- 3:18Jim mentioned sort of you know, where you guys are kind of
- 3:20coming up and really you know, making a lot of impact on the
- 3:23market, making a lot of noise. What specifically is driving the
- 3:29momentum around Vasa and how does that success reflect your
- 3:33unique values? Yeah.
- 3:36Thanks Jeff. And by the way it's it is great
- 3:37to be back on the show. I really did enjoy the last time
- 3:40and so it's it's nice to be here again.
- 3:43But around with the Vasa I think one of the things that that that
- 3:46really is striking to me as I sort of look trying to you know
- 3:49trying to be with an outside eye, side eye and and look at us
- 3:53is that I think it really does come down to customers.
- 3:56I think that's that's certainly my gauge for a great company is
- 3:59like who's actually buying, who's actually using, who's
- 4:01getting successful and getting value from the products.
- 4:03And I think that's been one where I've been really, really
- 4:05proud of what we've been able to do here.
- 4:07Just some really great companies and some really passionate
- 4:10champions. And so that's that's definitely
- 4:12part of I think what also makes people out in the market makes
- 4:16Seesos, Seesos you know listen to other Seesos like that is
- 4:18typically how how things sort of get bought, how things spread
- 4:22and I think I think we have been doing a really nice job there.
- 4:25The second big thing I think is really that it's a pretty
- 4:31innovative idea and a concept. And I think I, you know, and I
- 4:34always try and make sure I'm not, I'm not, I'm not selling
- 4:36myself too much here, but I really think, you know, I have,
- 4:39I've been an identity for a while and I think you guys have
- 4:41certainly been an identity for a while.
- 4:43And one of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of the
- 4:46players are just are, you know, they're kind of the same players
- 4:48you would have seen and expected, you know, 15 years
- 4:51ago. And I think, you know, the Octa
- 4:52sort of came in, but that was back in 2009, that Octa started.
- 4:55And so I think the identity hasn't had a tremendous amount
- 4:58of innovation over the last decade and 1/2 and I think it's
- 5:02been, it's been ripe, it's been ready.
- 5:04And so I think actually coming in with I think what is a pretty
- 5:06different approach in in really trying to go deep into
- 5:10authorization into this question of who can and should take what
- 5:13action and what data. I think is, you know, I think
- 5:16people respond to that and people have been hungry because
- 5:18and I think everybody knows that identity is a is a big thing
- 5:21that needs to be really addressed.
- 5:23So for people who aren't familiar with DAISA, I guess
- 5:26let's set, let's set the table for folks you know, we've
- 5:29mentioned authorization. We've mentioned the question and
- 5:31and the answer, right? Who can take what action on what
- 5:34data? What is Beza's sweet spot?
- 5:37What do you guys do? Yeah, I think you know from a
- 5:41from a value proposition, I think fundamentally the most
- 5:44important thing that we do is we help customers get to the
- 5:48reality of least privilege, right.
- 5:50If I think about like what you know, like from a security
- 5:52perspective, like what's important that I think is, is
- 5:55absolutely critical. Sometimes it's through
- 5:58governance processes like access reviews.
- 6:00Sometimes it's by having a tool that a security engineering
- 6:03person can go and actually look and find the biggest violations
- 6:07of least privilege to go and to go and fix them.
- 6:10But I think fundamentally it's that it's that preparation for
- 6:13the next breach. Because it's just, you know,
- 6:14that always resonates with me when I hear people talk about,
- 6:17hey, it's not a question, question of if it's a matter of
- 6:20when the next attack happens, the next breach happens.
- 6:23And I think really getting your organization ready, tightening
- 6:27down, privilege, tightening around access, especially
- 6:30privileged accounts, that's like so critical.
- 6:32So fundamentally like that's how I think about the value that we
- 6:35provide. I mean it's a very competitive
- 6:37market. You've got a lot of incumbents
- 6:38in this space, You've got upstarts and I guess you know,
- 6:43how do you separate yourself from others in this place?
- 6:46What's the core factor or thing that makes Vasa really stand out
- 6:50in your mind? Yeah, I think that it really is
- 6:53starting at the data model. Like when I think about the
- 6:56product and I think about the platform that we've built around
- 6:59identity security, it's pulling together all this information
- 7:03about what we call is the reality of authorization.
- 7:06So it's pulling in user information, group information,
- 7:10role information, decomposing all that morass of A WSI AM and
- 7:15Azure RBAC, but then also going deep into the service level to
- 7:20pull out granular system level objects in all the services and
- 7:25things like local users, ACL level permissions.
- 7:27So really going and putting together a pretty unique data
- 7:31set into into a graph and you know not just mapping those
- 7:35entities but the relationships between those identities.
- 7:37And I think that fundamental data model is, I mean it's it's
- 7:41a beast as you can imagine like that that is the really a tough
- 7:45problem to solve. But then once you have that, the
- 7:48things that you can then start applying that to you around
- 7:51actually creating products based on that data model are really,
- 7:56really interesting. And you can do things that are
- 7:58sort of traditional like IGA types of things like
- 8:00provisioning and life cycle management.
- 8:03You can do it in very different ways.
- 8:04And that's one of the things from a, you know, I'm a product
- 8:06guy at heart. And so that that kind of stuff
- 8:08gets me excited when you can sort of go and attack those
- 8:10those things that have been around forever, but do it in a
- 8:13dramatically different way that provides and solves problems
- 8:16that have been around forever. Yeah, Rich, I mean that really
- 8:20resonates with me. Anytime you've here of a new
- 8:25vendor, you've tried to, in your mind compartmentalize, OK, where
- 8:30did I fit them, right. And I think the area that vases
- 8:33in the closest to is governance. But I I feel like it's kind of
- 8:38like a gloss over just to say governance, right.
- 8:41It's like so much more than that, right?
- 8:44It's being able to drill down more than I've seen really
- 8:48anywhere else. But talk to you about kind of
- 8:52the the strategy of Visa in terms of the road map.
- 8:58I came up with the term the anti convergence strategy, right?
- 9:02And there there's a lot of IM players out there today who are
- 9:08really in the strategy around convergence, right?
- 9:11Whether you like it or not, that's the route they're going,
- 9:14which is to bolt on additional IM capabilities so that
- 9:20customers can kind of go one place to get everything.
- 9:23Your strategy is a lot different, right, which is to
- 9:26kind of take this piece of the marketplace and really like
- 9:31provided a solution with differentiation, right?
- 9:35Am I right in that? Am I wrong in that?
- 9:39And then can you elaborate on it?
- 9:41Yeah. No, I think I think you're
- 9:42absolutely right in that Jim because one of the things that I
- 9:46notice also it it plays into this sort of this whole tension
- 9:50and sort of you know difference in the market.
- 9:51When you look at sort of the you know big legacy companies versus
- 9:54start-ups you know and and certainly the approach of a big
- 9:57legacy company and pick Microsoft, pick sale point pick
- 10:02Cyber Ark or whoever you you want sort of in identity and the
- 10:06general strategy is there. I need more stuff in my bag to
- 10:09sell right. You go out and you want to say
- 10:11like hey, I, you know, I know people spend money on this and
- 10:13here are some budgets and I'm going to go use my, you know,
- 10:17my, the connection to the to the customer to go sell more stuff
- 10:20and get a bigger share of wallet.
- 10:21And so it's all about you know creating that portfolio whereas
- 10:24typically start-ups that's where frankly most of the innovation
- 10:28starts And and that's one of the challenges here is like when we
- 10:32started when I joined the company I was like man I hope
- 10:34there's a market but I don't know there's a market because
- 10:36it's so it it is so different and that I think I think it is
- 10:39true. It's not like we could go and
- 10:41say hey you know we know a bunch of people spend money on this
- 10:45kind of solution because there is no, there was no type of
- 10:47solution like this before. And so I think it is you know,
- 10:49really deep diving on authorization on and answering
- 10:53this question is a, it's a bit riskier because there's not an
- 10:57obvious market that this is sort of functionality that cuts
- 10:59across access management and the players like Optic cuts across
- 11:03Pam and the cyber arts of the world that cuts across IGA as
- 11:06you pointed out in governance put cuts across SSPM, you know
- 11:10SAS security posture management and data access governance with
- 11:13Veronis and all these different things.
- 11:15You know, authorization is something that's been sprinkled
- 11:17across all these different security markets.
- 11:20And no one has really before taken a comprehensive approach
- 11:24and say I'm going to solve that problem and I'm going to go deep
- 11:26in that. And I think that's what really
- 11:27makes Mesa different. Yeah.
- 11:29I mean, I think it makes sense for the company's strategies
- 11:32where they're in one spot like access management and to move
- 11:37into privilege or move into identity for the exactly the
- 11:40reason you talked about, which is how do they take those
- 11:43existing relationships and build their company, right?
- 11:47But I think what you guys have done is built the better
- 11:50mousetrap, but it seems like your strategy is to build an
- 11:52even better mousetrap, right? But it does seem like that
- 11:56mousetrap can be leveraged in certain areas, right?
- 11:59Because I think a lot of what you're talking about today, what
- 12:02we're talking about currently is taking access that exists and
- 12:08being able to analyze it. What if you provision only the
- 12:11access that a person needs? What?
- 12:13What are your thoughts there? Well you're you're you're you're
- 12:17you got a good crystal ball there Jim because that's that's
- 12:20exactly actually what we we've been moving in And so we we've
- 12:22thought about this in sort of a three stage approach from a
- 12:25strategy and we've started with the first stage is kind of
- 12:28visibility is like hey we just need to really understand what
- 12:32the reality is so we can show people and people could start
- 12:34using that data And then we moved on to OK now how do we do
- 12:38remediation that's Step 2. And so now I can see but now how
- 12:42do I fix, how do I see what's wrong, how do I see where the
- 12:45biggest risk, you know most highly damaging potentially
- 12:49damaging instances of over privilege exists.
- 12:52So I can go fix them, but then you go on to stage 3, which is
- 12:55absolutely, as you point out, it's around control, it's around
- 12:58provisioning. How do I make sure I actually
- 13:00create the right level permission out of the gate?
- 13:03How do I actually create those accounts either on birthright
- 13:06events, on, you know, joiner, mover lever types of things or
- 13:09when someone is asking for access because they need
- 13:12additional access to do their job, That's where the magic
- 13:15happens. And then making a virtuous
- 13:18cycle. Right now when you think about
- 13:20all these, you know, this, this, this grand access life cycle
- 13:24when for instance, you're in access reviews and you're
- 13:27saying, hey, somebody, you know, somebody has access, they
- 13:29shouldn't have, we should take that away.
- 13:31Well, how did they get that in the 1st place, right.
- 13:33Because they had to, they had to get provisioned somebody either,
- 13:36you know, fulfilled a ticket or there's a birthright policy
- 13:40that's wrong. And you know, just because you
- 13:42found 11 instance of it, is that the only instance of it?
- 13:46Is it where there's smoke, there's fire or is this, you
- 13:48know, something that's relevant for the whole group?
- 13:50Is there a whole role that's over permissioned or you know,
- 13:53there there's something broken? And sort of how do you take
- 13:55those little instances that you find and rather than just
- 13:59fixing, fixing those at a little granular level, how do you sort
- 14:02of take it and actually build intelligence into that to sort
- 14:05of fix the overall root cause of those processes that are that
- 14:08are broken? So I want to take the
- 14:09conversation a little away from theoretical and more into the
- 14:13real world. I was poke it around the Beza
- 14:15website, beza.com, there you go. There's a plug.
- 14:19You've got some really impressive logos that are kind
- 14:22of scrolling through there and it makes me kind of wonder, you
- 14:25know, beyond right, the logos we've got there.
- 14:29What are there any indications of?
- 14:30Are there specific types of challenges that Beza is best
- 14:34suited to solve? Where?
- 14:36What is that actual sweet spot that we've got here?
- 14:39Yeah. And you'll, you'll find there's
- 14:40a, there's a range of them, right.
- 14:41And so it's, it's funny how you know every company's struggling
- 14:45with something that's that's often a little bit different.
- 14:47So in some cases it's around sort of struggling with
- 14:51identities, right. And so it's not just human
- 14:54identities, but often. One good example here is machine
- 14:57identities and service accounts, right.
- 14:58They might be trying to, you know, sort of broaden the
- 15:01definition around governance to include things like that.
- 15:05It might be instances where they're they're actually seeing
- 15:09that typical role based access control doesn't work for them
- 15:12right? That they're trying to manage by
- 15:14groups and roles. And you know, and this is the
- 15:18the canonical classic example is you've got a role that's named
- 15:21read only and guess what they're right privileges embedded in
- 15:25there. And so you know, and what you
- 15:28start to realize is that you're not really doing role based
- 15:32access control. You're you're managing by names
- 15:36of roles and descriptions of roles, right.
- 15:38And so the and the reality is that you know, hey, what does
- 15:42this role actually do, you know, does does being a member of this
- 15:44role and being able to assume this role actually allow this
- 15:48person to go blow away my customer database as an example
- 15:52And he said, wow, I wouldn't want that and I hope it doesn't,
- 15:55but I don't know. And so this is one of the things
- 15:58that when you start to pull on that thread, it it's it, it
- 16:02becomes obvious that a new solution is required.
- 16:05And sort of like the way that different customers pull on that
- 16:08thread can vary. Sometimes it's an auditor that
- 16:10sort of figures it out and starts asking lots of
- 16:12uncomfortable questions. Sometimes it's the CISO
- 16:14themselves. And you know, it's like
- 16:16following up out of a breach where you know, it's only in
- 16:19asking these really concrete questions and understanding how
- 16:23limited all the existing tool sets are that, you know, a CSO
- 16:27or somebody or some executive of the company realizes that there
- 16:31needs to be a different way. So I was going to ask a follow
- 16:34up question here around, you know these are relatively large
- 16:38companies, right, well known. I'm going to have to imagine
- 16:40that they already have tools in this space for Identity and
- 16:43access management, probably a number of them.
- 16:46Which leads me to the question of how do you get somebody who
- 16:50has already got tools in a space to say, oh, hey, you know,
- 16:53you've got this new tool, it's called VASA.
- 16:55We should take a look at it and then actually get in to some of
- 16:58these organizations. I mean, how do you establish
- 17:00that trust, that confidence rate and say, hey, this is something
- 17:05that we've not been able to achieve with the tool sets that
- 17:07we have and Vasa is solving for us.
- 17:10This specific thing or these specific things, maybe there's a
- 17:12variety of them. How do you, how do you even get
- 17:14into that conversation with the Cesos, with the other folks who
- 17:17are making those decisions on their investments?
- 17:20Yeah well the the nice thing is that let most Cesos are very are
- 17:24are interested in new technologies.
- 17:26So you know so even if you're if they're saying hey you know
- 17:29maybe I'm not going to buy anything but they want to know
- 17:31what's going on. And so that's that's always you
- 17:33know something where you can especially if it's something new
- 17:36and something that they they haven't seen a lot of tools
- 17:38around it's you know they they generally are are interested and
- 17:44and then it's sort of a question of like hey how does this map
- 17:46into something that's on my key priorities for the next year,
- 17:51right. So you know when you actually
- 17:52get down to okay like you know are they going to actually buy
- 17:55the product or not. It has to obviously be relevant
- 17:57for something that they care about and and that's one where
- 18:00you know it, it can again it it varies, right.
- 18:03And and I know one of one of our customers we were in the in the
- 18:07first meeting and and actually we're having the conversation
- 18:11and it was sort of you know we're dancing around it.
- 18:13It was kind of, you know, kind of interesting, but we saw
- 18:15something written up behind him on his whiteboard and it was
- 18:19just, it was just the word China.
- 18:20And we said China, what's that? And he started describing some
- 18:25of the problems that he was having with managing access to
- 18:29box folders. And so it was both the problem
- 18:32of having data from because they they had operations
- 18:35internationally. And so it was both from the
- 18:37example of data from people in China.
- 18:40So you know PII of Chinese nationals being accessed by
- 18:43people outside of China and the reverse that there were some
- 18:46some sensitive things that if you were a Chinese national you
- 18:49shouldn't get access to and just be able to manage that right of
- 18:53like you know this, this cross-border issue with a
- 18:56particular place where they had a lot of data that was important
- 18:59to them. And so it was you know and so
- 19:01that turned out to be a key use case for them.
- 19:04And so again you know when you when you talk to all these
- 19:08different customers, it can vary.
- 19:09Sometimes it's GitHub, sometimes it's Salesforce, sometimes it's
- 19:12Snowflake, sometimes it's AWS, Azure, GCP, sometimes it's
- 19:16custom applications. And this is this is 1 where that
- 19:19that was true for our very first customer and they they were
- 19:24trying to do it because they had built a on top of their SAS
- 19:27platform, a help desk application, right so custom
- 19:30custom app. But for all the people who were
- 19:32helping their customers resolve tickets, right and resolve
- 19:36issues and you know help desk folks are you know there are a
- 19:41lot of them. They have a fairly high tune
- 19:42over. They're not always the highest
- 19:44paid and highest level. You know you got a lot of
- 19:46analyst level people and this Cesar wasn't sure what the help
- 19:51desk people had had access to. When you know when they're able
- 19:54to actually you know get into a customer tenant and and and get
- 19:58a pretty deep access, that was the number one thing that they
- 20:01were concerned about. So it really varies from
- 20:04customer to customer sort of. You know what the area is that's
- 20:07most important, but so much of it result revolves around that
- 20:11core theme that we've been talking about, who, who has
- 20:13access to what, and should they have that access?
- 20:17So Rich, you've been doing a lot of videos lately, and I saw
- 20:20video on LinkedIn with you and your founder and CEO Tarun
- 20:25Thakur. So hi Tarun.
- 20:28And he said something. I'm going to quote him here,
- 20:32knowing who can take action on what data is the biggest
- 20:36identity challenge. So I wanted to break that down a
- 20:38little bit because I think when we talk identity, it's not
- 20:45always brought back to the data that you're protecting the data
- 20:49and and knowing who has access to what data is being important.
- 20:53So why is Why use the term data? Why?
- 20:57Why is that the important differentiator?
- 21:00Yeah. For us it really comes down to
- 21:02the overall priorities of an organization.
- 21:06And when you think about, you know, everybody talks in
- 21:08security by the crown jewels that more the most frequent
- 21:12thing there is the data are the crown jewels.
- 21:14Like why are you protecting it? It's not really because you need
- 21:17to protect the servers. It's not because the
- 21:18infrastructure is that valuable because it's all dynamic, right.
- 21:20It's all in the cloud. Like I don't really care that my
- 21:24infrastructure is protected except that I need to protect
- 21:27the data that's running on that infrastructure, right.
- 21:29That tends to be the number one thing and obviously there are
- 21:32there are exceptions to that but when you go and have the board
- 21:35level conversation when you're talking to the CSO that that has
- 21:39been a strongly resonant theme is that I want to protect my
- 21:44data why are we doing all this why am I doing security at all.
- 21:47And and that that's the the been the piece that comes out is is
- 21:51most strongly and and something that you know that gets board
- 21:53level attention that you know every and everybody knows if you
- 21:56if you have a breach around the data that you know that makes
- 22:01the paper right that's that that's the thing that really
- 22:03gets gets nailed. So it's it's really around that
- 22:05resonance of being able to connect it to a real business
- 22:08goal that everybody understands. Yeah.
- 22:10And I know your role, you're not the the frontline like cold
- 22:14calling people. We might run into this objection
- 22:18which is well we do our back so we don't, we don't need this,
- 22:22right. I think this kind of discussion
- 22:28really goes to OK level beyond our back towards a more data
- 22:33centric approach, right. Do you see that like is like
- 22:37people think RBAC is at the right level of managing?
- 22:42Security, I think most everybody does RBAC, but when you point
- 22:47out some of these natural flaws, and I think one of the one of my
- 22:50favourites to talk about this with is with reference to access
- 22:53reviews because everybody's sort of gone through it.
- 22:55If you're a manager, you, you know, at any companies of size,
- 22:59you've done an access review. And so you've gone through and
- 23:02done all these things where you said, hey, this is, you know,
- 23:04you know, here's Fred, he's on my team and here's all the stuff
- 23:07that Fred has access to. And is that right?
- 23:10And I asked this question again. You know, I remember back to,
- 23:13you know, one of the one of the Csos or one of my organization.
- 23:15I said, you know, I said, hey, how, what's your experience with
- 23:18that? Like, you know, is that a good
- 23:20experience for you? And he said, yeah, half the time
- 23:23I don't know what I'm clicking yes to.
- 23:24And I like that is a very, that's an extremely common
- 23:28experience is that people are saying yes, but it's kind of
- 23:33meaningless. It's this whole idea of, you
- 23:36know, compliance theatre or security theatre, right.
- 23:39People are going through the motions because you have to,
- 23:41right? You've got to have access
- 23:42reviews, that's you've got to check that box.
- 23:45But wouldn't it be great if you could actually do that and and
- 23:50do that compliance process, spend the time, ask everybody
- 23:54who's managing to spend the time and actually improve your
- 23:57security posture at the same time?
- 23:59Wouldn't that be great? Is that too much to ask?
- 24:02And we don't think it is, in that you can actually do these
- 24:04all you know that that's the real reason you're doing access
- 24:07reviews is you want to restrict access.
- 24:10You want to make sure that only the people who need it are
- 24:13getting access. And if you don't give people the
- 24:16right information about what that really means, you're asking
- 24:20them to do an impossible job. And this, this is the thing that
- 24:24I think is so fundamentally broken with most of these
- 24:27processes is people doing these things that they know don't
- 24:29really help, and there's a better way.
- 24:32Let's talk about the the principle of least privilege,
- 24:35because I kind of feel like least privilege and RBAC pull it
- 24:41opposite ends of the of the string you've got.
- 24:44RBAC where it's saying we need to establish these roles is
- 24:49going to give certain levels of application level access.
- 24:56But when you're talking about an enterprise, I mean think of how
- 24:59many systems and how many roles within those systems that you
- 25:02have to manage amongst potentially hundreds of
- 25:05thousands of of your workforce. Now if you were to do true least
- 25:10privilege to every one of those systems and to the data, doesn't
- 25:15it become unmanageable? Absolutely right.
- 25:19So the way I would look at it is, I don't know if I'd say
- 25:21they're at polar opposite ends of the spectrum, but I think
- 25:25that you know least privilege everybody agrees with in
- 25:27principle. Like I've never heard anybody
- 25:29say Nah, I don't believe in least privilege like it's it's
- 25:31you know everybody agrees it's the right idea.
- 25:34It's really a question of how do you implement it.
- 25:36And so RBAC is sort of is the way I see is like most every
- 25:40organization at some level has implements RBAC as a practical
- 25:44way to get to least privilege. But even within that, the
- 25:48challenge is how do I get the right roles, how do I even
- 25:52assign the right roles. And so I'll I'll give another
- 25:54example here. One of our customers actually
- 25:56uses VASA as a provisioning intelligence tool.
- 26:00What I mean by that is what they have is that they have a process
- 26:04around Snowflake. And so when a developer who's
- 26:07doing their developer job needs access to something in
- 26:11Snowflake, maybe a table in Snowflake, and they submit a
- 26:14ticket and they ask, hey, I want to get the access to this.
- 26:17So the challenge this organization had before Vasa was
- 26:21they had all these rules in Snowflake and they didn't know
- 26:23which rule to provision. Because that's the question is
- 26:26like, how do you know what rule best conforms to least
- 26:29privilege, the role that gives them access to that table that
- 26:31they need and as little else as possible?
- 26:34That's an incredibly hard thing to answer, right, because
- 26:38there's no tool could actually see what does this role do in
- 26:42Snowflake, really what does this give access to?
- 26:45And so by using Vasa, they actually were able to implement
- 26:48that. So simply saying, hey, now I
- 26:50know what role to give, right. And by doing that, they and they
- 26:54and they actually measured this. So they have, they had an
- 26:56internal process where they were actually looking at the total
- 26:59exposure and the total risk from all the different permissions on
- 27:03Snowflake. When they introduced Vasa after
- 27:05a year of doing this process, they were able to reduce the
- 27:08total number of permissions, the total risk on snowflake by 80%.
- 27:12So that's by just knowing what role do I grant because they had
- 27:17no way to know before. So you know, so Vasa can
- 27:20absolutely and almost always does We actually make our back
- 27:24better, right. It's not that we replace our
- 27:26back and this is also one of the themes about how we work in
- 27:29general is that we really, I think I've done a nice job of
- 27:34meeting customers where they are.
- 27:35We don't force you to go take a different architecture.
- 27:38We're leveraging all the existing authorization schemes
- 27:42in the native systems that you're already using.
- 27:44But we actually tell you what it means and help you fix what's
- 27:47broken. OK, Rich, so help me out here.
- 27:49Does Visa tell me what a person has or on the other end of the
- 27:56spectrum, who can do some action on my data?
- 28:00Which one? You can go both directions
- 28:03right? So so this is this is the beauty
- 28:05of having a graph is you can start from you know for us the
- 28:09person is on the left side of the graph.
- 28:10And by person I mean might be a real person or might be a
- 28:14service account. But then I can traverse through
- 28:17and say all right this person is linked to a group and that group
- 28:21might be a nested group that then connects to a role.
- 28:24That role might be hierarchical then that goes into maybe I'm
- 28:28going to go through a bunch of different policies in in IAM,
- 28:33but then all the eventually I'm going to get all the way down to
- 28:36a resource in that target system and an action that can be taken
- 28:41on that target system in the end.
- 28:42So one of the big innovations as well that we've also built in
- 28:45here is this idea of effective permissions in that we do a
- 28:49translation. And so we don't just give you
- 28:51the raw permissions that are in the system because often times
- 28:55it's very hard to understand what those things mean.
- 28:57But we'll actually say, hey, does this mean you can create,
- 29:00read, update or delete the language of CRUD, right.
- 29:04And so you can do that on this object and of course you and
- 29:08then you can go the other way as well.
- 29:09And that's one of the beautiful things about the graph.
- 29:11You can say, hey, my customer database, a resource in this
- 29:14system in Snowflake or you know, Bitbucket, you know, I, I have
- 29:20AI have a repo in GitHub. I want to see everybody who has
- 29:23access to that thing, right. You can go the other way.
- 29:25And so it's a it's a very flexible kind of data model.
- 29:29Yeah, I think that's important is like you can go either way.
- 29:32And then one of the nuances I picked up on what you're just
- 29:34saying, you can start in the middle.
- 29:37You can start with, hey, I want to see what this role or this
- 29:40group does or can do. And I think that's important.
- 29:45You know, there's this debate in the identity community around
- 29:50least privilege or if you just like take a beeline to 0
- 29:54standing privilege. But The thing is, like, even if
- 29:58you go to the 0 standing privilege route, eventually you
- 30:01have to put it on to a user. And if you don't really know
- 30:05what it does, then you're just like saying, all right, well,
- 30:08we're going to trust you with this machine gun for 15 minutes
- 30:12and hopefully you use it as intended.
- 30:15That's that's exactly right. Now that's that's great insight
- 30:18because that's that's always one of the things that makes me
- 30:20scratch my head is like you know 0 standing privilege and doing
- 30:23just in time is great. I mean that's a that's an
- 30:25important aspect. But you're still granting
- 30:27access. And if you're if you're sort of
- 30:29going to you know all just in time privilege like you know the
- 30:33number of approvals that have to go through magnifies you know by
- 30:37by whatever that is by whatever factor you want to pick.
- 30:40And then those approvals just get rubber stamped right.
- 30:44And so you're always have, you know there's always a a you know
- 30:47sort of a balance there because the more approvals you do and
- 30:50and force through a sort of a just in time provisioning
- 30:52system, the less attention that gets paid to each of them.
- 30:55And so you, you always want to be judicious about that and say
- 30:58hey maybe there's some people who should never get access.
- 31:00I don't care who approves it. I don't care if their manager
- 31:02says it's OK like you know, Fred should not be able to blow away
- 31:06the customer database. Like I don't care if somebody
- 31:10says it's OK. But it's Fred.
- 31:11Come on, I mean. I'm sure there's someone out
- 31:15there whose name is Fred who's really his.
- 31:18His ears are steaming right now. He's not happy with what we're
- 31:21saying about him. No, I know.
- 31:22I I feel sorry. Just Fred things.
- 31:25I'm sorry, Fred, when you're out there.
- 31:29There was a video that we saw around Intelligent Access and
- 31:35one of the things that it covered or one of the things I
- 31:37emphasized was covering all systems.
- 31:40So all right, I've got my skeptic cat on now because I've
- 31:43been through enough of these appointments where there's
- 31:45always an asterisk or something. Is it really all systems meaning
- 31:52legacy systems as well modern systems, SAS, non SAS?
- 31:58Help me understand what the coverage looks like here and
- 32:00what's what's realistic from AI guess from that coverage or
- 32:04integration perspective. Yep, that's a a great question
- 32:07and you're right to be skeptical because that is all that that is
- 32:10always the that is always the the devil's in the details and
- 32:13the reality is for some systems that we cover natively their
- 32:17cloud that have well formed AP is integration can be very, very
- 32:21fast, right. And so you know the on the on
- 32:23that example for I know of at least one customer where they
- 32:27were able to fully deploy Vasa in about 30 minutes because they
- 32:31were all cloud. And the SISO who happened to be
- 32:35our server customer champion there happened to have admin
- 32:39level privileges for all the systems that we were worried
- 32:41about. So I won't comment on that but
- 32:44that was the reality as it sometimes is And so he was able
- 32:47to go set up the read only roles that's sort of one of the
- 32:50necessary pieces you want to you want to make sure that BEZA has
- 32:53least privilege that we only have access to the stuff that we
- 32:56need to do the job and the and fulfil the use cases that you've
- 33:00bought the product for. So it was it was very
- 33:02straightforward and that was and then we're off to the races In
- 33:06other cases where for instance the custom application or if
- 33:10it's an on premise application that doesn't have good Restful
- 33:13APIs right then we've got to figure out a different way to
- 33:17get the data into the Vasa system and that can take some
- 33:20more work. And so an example here is one of
- 33:23our larger customers that's using us for access reviews
- 33:27integrated in about the first, I think it was about the first
- 33:30four months or so about 60 different custom applications to
- 33:34do access reviews on, right. And so that took some work.
- 33:36But still I would say if you've if you've ever gone through an
- 33:39IGA deployment and tried to do it, getting 60 custom
- 33:42applications in four months is a pretty good clip of things.
- 33:47And so that's that's sort of the the longer end.
- 33:49And the other thing I'll say is that from even on premise
- 33:53systems, we have a couple of customers that are all on Prem
- 33:57right zero cloud. And so they actually that was
- 34:00actually one that was surprising to me because I remember asking
- 34:03this I was we were at one of these one of our company
- 34:05meetings and I asked the questions like hey how are we,
- 34:08how are we doing on the on Prem is that is that real?
- 34:10Because I was, I was wondering myself over how it actually
- 34:12worked in reality And and they were like, yeah, we got a couple
- 34:15customers that are fully, fully on Prem.
- 34:17And I was like that's really fantastic because that gives me
- 34:21the confidence that they can actually get the value out of
- 34:23Visa even though they don't have any any cloud infrastructure at
- 34:26all. I think that's a really
- 34:29important distinction and maybe you know I'm not going to try
- 34:33and take over iveza's marketing, but that is an area that I
- 34:36typically see a lot of struggle with is hey you know what on
- 34:40Prem is on Prem we're not even going to try it man.
- 34:43We're going to focus on the cloud and SAS based applications
- 34:46and things like that because we know that they are having you
- 34:50know connectivity, they've got integrations, right.
- 34:53All the stuff's there. But you know I guess maybe
- 34:56something to think about to go to market is hey what is you
- 35:00know we can handle the on Prem stuff too which I think is such
- 35:03a missing link for a lot of things in this space.
- 35:06So I'm happy to hear it. What I'm not happy to hear about
- 35:09is 30 minutes to install something, get things
- 35:12configured. It's going to put people like me
- 35:14out of a job for integrating IGA.
- 35:17But I think that's that's another thing too, right, is how
- 35:20quickly you can get in there. Now 30 minutes I think you
- 35:22mentioned was a Seeso who had admin access to things which,
- 35:26you know, say what you want about Seeso's.
- 35:27A lot of them do like to have their hands in the pie.
- 35:31What is a normal, I guess, integration timeline look like?
- 35:34Is it days, weeks, months? I mean, it can't really be 30
- 35:37minutes all the time, but what's a what's an average deployment
- 35:40look like? Yeah, I'd say you know on
- 35:42average you know it's going to be in the term of weeks and
- 35:45that's also because you know usually what happens is and and
- 35:50we certainly encourage this is the, you know the the key to
- 35:52success is to start start small. So start with start with your
- 35:55cloud, start with something easy and get some wins right that and
- 35:58that's always the thing to you know to actually build momentum
- 36:01to build knowledge with the system and understanding with
- 36:04the system. So you know it, it sort of, you
- 36:06know, it depends how where you draw your boundaries and where
- 36:08you draw your lines. But you know, usually customers
- 36:11will start with something in the cloud, get it going quickly, get
- 36:15some wins and then they're off to the races.
- 36:16So from from a from a deployment in you know in you know a week
- 36:20or two, that's not unreasonable 'cause that's your approach.
- 36:22But if your if your goal post is you know got 1000 on Prem
- 36:25applications that are fully customized and on mainframes and
- 36:30AS4 hundreds that will that will take longer.
- 36:35AS400 green screens, They're giving me a flashback.
- 36:38So it's of our prior life. The other thing that I thought
- 36:42was interesting was this idea of covering all identities.
- 36:45So I'm guessing that means human and non human machines, service
- 36:50counts etcetera. I guess how do you, how do you
- 36:52make sure that you've got all the identities, types I guess
- 36:57covered and making sure you've got the right correlations in
- 36:59place to say, Oh yeah, this is Jeff and not AI version of Jeff
- 37:03or some machine or service account that Jeff is using to
- 37:06run an application. Can you walk us through a little
- 37:08bit about how that works? Yeah.
- 37:10And I think it's it's really that you know, I think I and I
- 37:13think the thing I'd like to to really emphasize here is that
- 37:16the, the thing that I've seen that is pretty different is also
- 37:20just the way that service accounts have been treated,
- 37:22right. And that and that you know
- 37:23obviously there's there are you know solutions out there that
- 37:26will go after service accounts. But typically the world of
- 37:29identity has sort of hasn't really treated those as sort of
- 37:34you know, full partners if you will, where you know like you
- 37:37know typically the, you know the service account types of
- 37:40processes have been around the Pam world, right.
- 37:42It's been in like Yep, you want to get your, you know your
- 37:45secrets and your certificates into the into the secrets vault.
- 37:48Yep, that's great. But in terms of doing things
- 37:51like governance around service accounts over like, hey, you
- 37:55know, I want to do an accessory not around people but around
- 37:57like hey, you know, do we know what this, what applications the
- 38:00service account is actually attaching to and is it right.
- 38:04And has the person who developed a service account and created
- 38:07the service account, do they still work at the company and
- 38:10you know, who who owns the service account?
- 38:12Those are the kinds of questions that we typically see are
- 38:16missing. And that's actually one of the
- 38:18things that I think has been most attractive with some of
- 38:20our, you know our really large customers especially in the
- 38:24financial services side that's sort of where they're headed now
- 38:26where they there's you know it's actually around this sort of
- 38:29machine identity service account governance processes that's sort
- 38:34of the forefront of that. Where they're saying Yep, we
- 38:35want to do the same kinds of things we do with human based
- 38:39HR, system based access reviews, but we want to do it, we want to
- 38:42do it on service accounts. And so I think that's the big,
- 38:44that's the big biggest missing piece.
- 38:46I say it's not necessarily the technology which is which is
- 38:49great and I think the technology is an important piece of that.
- 38:52But the fact that now that most customers have sort of treated
- 38:55it operationally and from a process standpoint as something
- 38:58outside as something not identity based.
- 39:01And I think that that's something that's pretty that we
- 39:03see changing, which is great. Rich, I have to key off that
- 39:06because it, it feels like secure or yeah, securing machine
- 39:12accounts, non human accounts, it's kind of like the bane of
- 39:15all of our existence these days. They're starting to outnumber
- 39:19human accounts, if not already. Do you find that your customers
- 39:24are coming to you to solve that problem?
- 39:26Like that's the problem they need to solve?
- 39:28Are they starting there? Many, many are.
- 39:32Yep. And this is, this is something
- 39:33we were you know and it like I mentioned there's you know it's
- 39:36it's a pretty broad set of use cases that people key off.
- 39:39But definitely that service account coverage is a big deal
- 39:43for a a for a number of customers.
- 39:46And I think you know this is, this is one of the things I know
- 39:48and if you you mentioned the the Microsoft breach, that's
- 39:51certainly one that comes to mind here as we start to see attacks
- 39:57that are sort of well documented and well publicized that focus
- 40:00around as the Microsoft one did a legacy Oauth application.
- 40:04Had had the ability to go get elevated privilege and that was
- 40:08it, you know instead of that Oauth app and that's that
- 40:10service account linkage was key to the attack factor, right,
- 40:16that that was really the key part of that.
- 40:18And so when as we see more of those things, I think I think
- 40:22customers are going to start to realize how critical that piece
- 40:26is and say, yeah, we got to get you know our security tooling
- 40:29that covers those things as well.
- 40:30We can't just worry about people as we've traditionally defined
- 40:33it. Now it has to.
- 40:34We really do have to get to that because it's it's not only is it
- 40:37as you point out, Jim, it's a, it's a huge and more rapidly
- 40:41increasing surface area in terms of the number of accounts, the
- 40:44number of machines there. But also the fact that most
- 40:48security tooling I think hasn't emphasized that in the same way,
- 40:51especially on the Identity side. So I just wanted to key up for
- 40:56something else you just said there.
- 40:57So you talked about that Microsoft breach.
- 41:01So you wrote a blog. I read the whole blog, then I
- 41:04watched the video, and then I realized that the whole blog was
- 41:06basically the video. So either read the blog if you'd
- 41:09like to read or watch the video if you're like me and you don't
- 41:12like to read. I just wanted to point out
- 41:15something. So it was you and Tarun were
- 41:18talking and you guys went out of your way to compliment
- 41:23Microsoft, right? Because I think that one of the
- 41:27things that they did that really needed to be recognized was that
- 41:31they came out, they were honest about the issue, they documented
- 41:35the issue. You know, it wasn't the best
- 41:38look, right? Because I think it was
- 41:40essentially something that didn't have MFA enabled, right?
- 41:44But rather than try and sweep it under the rug and wait till
- 41:47somebody finds out and try to ignore the issue, they were
- 41:51proactive. Absolutely.
- 41:53I I still give them props because it's like those things
- 41:56are so valuable for certainly for me.
- 41:59But I think it's. I think it's true for the entire
- 42:00community to really understand what went on and you know, and
- 42:04this is the same same deal. You know and maybe, you know, I
- 42:10don't know if I'd give Okta quite as many props in terms of
- 42:13their transparency over the last stuff.
- 42:14But you know they the information has gotten out there
- 42:17and and it's it's eventually gotten there around the role
- 42:21that inbound federation played in The MGM breach.
- 42:24You know that. But but again that when I
- 42:26compare sort of the outward response for Microsoft and Okta,
- 42:30you know, that's that's why I sort of do give Microsoft props
- 42:33because they were, you know, they were very forthcoming, had
- 42:35a lot of really good detail. It was like, wow, this is, you
- 42:38know, I really understand how this thing worked, you know,
- 42:40maybe not fully fully, but you know, 80% of the way there I
- 42:43got, you know, it was, it was very useful and actionable in
- 42:46terms of sort of how that all went down.
- 42:49I always find it a struggle and a challenge to figure out when
- 42:52do you make disclosures like that?
- 42:54Because I think there's a rush to Do you tell people right away
- 42:57and not know the full story or do you wait so you have the full
- 43:00story and then tell people and there's all I don't envy anybody
- 43:04who has to disclose information like that because I think you're
- 43:08really caught in a rock and a hard place.
- 43:10You're already in trouble cuz you had an incident and now it's
- 43:14well, what if we release information too early?
- 43:16It's not correct, right? Is it better to release early
- 43:19and then have to make corrections, or do you wait
- 43:22until you know a little bit more what's the right balance?
- 43:24The longer you wait, people get suspicious and they're like,
- 43:27well, why didn't you tell us sooner?
- 43:29You know, it's it's a difficult balance and I don't envy any
- 43:31organization that that gets put in that position, that's for
- 43:33sure. Yeah, my gosh, I, I, I, I look
- 43:37at the the Cesos that are at my our our customer organizations
- 43:41like that is a tough tough job and it is it's no joke.
- 43:46So I I agree that's really, really challenging.
- 43:49And it's also interesting because although it's not
- 43:51certified what I'd say like our primary use case, but it's one
- 43:54that I think is going to be a really interesting one for us
- 43:58for Vasa actually in the future is actually starting to bring to
- 44:01bear this whole question of you know who has access to what, but
- 44:04do it in the context of post breach investigation.
- 44:08So you know, so you know, you know in in the security
- 44:09operations team, 'cause this is one of the things that I've,
- 44:12I've definitely heard is obviously the gold standard is,
- 44:15you know, I want to look at the activity.
- 44:16I want to look, OK, you know, I had a breached account.
- 44:18I'm going to go check and look at the logs and see, you know,
- 44:21what did this account access, you know, after this time and,
- 44:24you know, time and date. But the the challenge that I've
- 44:27heard from Csos is really that, hey, you know, logging is great,
- 44:31but a lot of times logging isn't turned on, right, because it's
- 44:35expensive and it's a lot of memory and people charge you,
- 44:38you know, left, right and Center for it.
- 44:39And so sometimes it just never gets turned on.
- 44:41And sometimes when it's turned on, it doesn't quite give you
- 44:45the right information, right. It's not enough to really
- 44:48understand what went on. And so you end up having some
- 44:51big gaps. And so you can never just rely
- 44:54on logging, you know, after an incident like you've got to keep
- 44:57going, You've got to dig deeper. And so, you know, if you think
- 44:59about sort of a set of concentric circles, you know,
- 45:02the first one you go do is like look at the logging and look at
- 45:04the activity. But then the next you want to
- 45:07say, well, what could this account have touched?
- 45:09Like what were the permissions for that account?
- 45:10And that's one where Vasa is extremely powerful and I'll I'll
- 45:15throw in one one other product pitch and then I'll stop.
- 45:17But we also do leverage the activity monitoring as well.
- 45:21So you know, so now it's actually pulling both of those
- 45:23things into a single platform, not just the activity of who
- 45:26accessed what, but also who could access what and having
- 45:30those two things together I think is going to be a really
- 45:32powerful use case for our post breach forensic security
- 45:36operations in the future. Well, it must be rid of my mind,
- 45:39'cause I was kind of thinking here as talking as like a tool
- 45:41like this would be really handy for a forensic, you know,
- 45:44investigation. I guess it's better to have it
- 45:47before the incident happened so you can capture the activity of
- 45:51what's happening. But even afterwards, being able
- 45:54to do that diagnosis of, OK, well, here's the account.
- 45:57Now at least we know the account that got popped or whatever
- 46:00phrase you want to use, right, That that, that caused the
- 46:02breach, What else could it have touched, I think is really
- 46:04interesting. So you kind of stole my Thunder
- 46:06there. So pitch away that was.
- 46:08That was where I was headed anyway, from a question
- 46:10standpoint. Nice.
- 46:11We're we're on the same page here.
- 46:13That's good we are. So I want to wrap up a
- 46:15conversation with a lighter note because that's how we typically
- 46:19will end our our shows. The last time you were here, we
- 46:22asked questions around longevity because that was something that
- 46:25I think you know, you've got some interest and we talked
- 46:28about what's the most interesting thing you've learned
- 46:30about longevity. If you want to know more about
- 46:32that, again go back to episode 231.
- 46:35But I want to stay in that same vein, right?
- 46:36Try to stay with interests. This one I think is a little
- 46:39more fun, Maybe thought provoking and rich.
- 46:43I'll ask you first, the fountain of youth or the wisdom of age?
- 46:48If you absolutely you could only choose one, which would you pick
- 46:54and why? It it is a a fantastic question
- 46:58and I think you know it depends on you know what we how old I am
- 47:04when you when you ask this questions because I think one of
- 47:07the beautiful things about getting older has been
- 47:10appreciating the wisdom of age more.
- 47:12And, you know, I I also think about, you know, as you as I've
- 47:17gotten older, I just, I there's a level of comfort and
- 47:22confidence and just, you know, knowing who you are is just a
- 47:25wonderful thing. And you know, I I think about it
- 47:28because I've got two teenage boys and just, you know, the
- 47:30challenges of being a teenager and thinking that everybody is
- 47:33staring at you. It's like it's so mentally
- 47:36traumatizing. It's tough.
- 47:38Being a teenager was really rough.
- 47:39And you know, as you get older, you just start to care less and
- 47:42less and and This is why you see so many old guys walking around
- 47:46with Plaid pants is they just stop caring.
- 47:48And there's a there's a beauty to that that I've really
- 47:50appreciated. So I don't have my Plaid pants
- 47:52yet, but I aspire to that. So Plaid Pants is how we know
- 47:57that you've picked the the the wisdom of age.
- 48:00That's. Right.
- 48:00That's when. That's when you know I'm on, I'm
- 48:02on the, the, the, I've, I've reached the, the, the final
- 48:05stage of development. Jim, how about yourself, Which
- 48:09one do you pick? Fountain of Youth or Wisdom of
- 48:12Age and. I I don't think anybody could
- 48:16have said better than Rich right there.
- 48:18I mean, seriously, like every thought I was having on this
- 48:21topic, you just hit all of them. And I actually feel like I'm
- 48:27happier now at 50 than I was at 40.
- 48:30And I remember having the thought I'm happier now at 40
- 48:34than I was at 30. And I'll bet you it goes all the
- 48:36way back. And I have two teenage boys as
- 48:39well. I've got a 19 year old who I
- 48:43love him to death, right? It's like he's working a job,
- 48:47like manual labor and making like under 20 bucks an hour and
- 48:51he's talking about going and buying like a $40,000 truck.
- 48:55And it's like as a 50 year old, you just look at that and you're
- 48:59just like, my goodness, kid, what are you thinking about?
- 49:03You have zero debt right now and it's like he can't wait to get
- 49:06into debt. And what he doesn't realize is
- 49:09once you get into debt, you're in debt for the rest of your
- 49:11life. Because like, yeah, you know,
- 49:14you're just, you're always running credit cards, you get
- 49:17ahead financially and all that, right?
- 49:19It's not like you're living paycheck to paycheck your whole
- 49:22life, but you've always got payments, right?
- 49:25Most people, most of us, all have a mortgage and maybe a car
- 49:28payment, etcetera. What would be ideal?
- 49:33I know this is cheating with this question would be youth,
- 49:37physical youth, but also keeping your your wisdom.
- 49:44No, I mean that's that's absolutely, 100% cheap.
- 49:47I mean, that's what everyone wants, right?
- 49:49I mean, there's there's TV shows that, you know, vampires live
- 49:53forever, you got altered carbon, which you've never seen on
- 49:56Netflix is fantastic. I love it.
- 49:59Same idea there. I've heard that Warren Buffett
- 50:01said that he would give up all of his money to be like 21
- 50:05again, so I'm not going to go. Does he retain the knowledge?
- 50:10That he's gained. Because I think it, I think, you
- 50:12know, 45 to anyway, I'm only 50, so I can't speak beyond this too
- 50:17much with experience anyway. But I think in that range.
- 50:22I'm happy with where I'm at. Like, I don't like all the signs
- 50:25of aging, but I'm really like happy with my life.
- 50:29I'm happy with the person that I am.
- 50:30If people don't like me, I really don't care.
- 50:33And I can't say that when I was in my 20s, like I really cared
- 50:36what people thought of me. What about you, Jeff?
- 50:39You know, Rich, I I couldn't disagree more.
- 50:43I I wish I was still 20. I could almost dunk a
- 50:46basketball. Yes, I used to be able to.
- 50:49If you look at me now, it's like there's no way that that dude is
- 50:51getting any more than six inches off the ground.
- 50:53No, I'm just kidding. I think, you know, I think you
- 50:56hit it right on the head. I mean everything you just said,
- 50:58same thing, you know more confident more comfortable with
- 51:01who I am, the knowledge that I've gained, you know Now if I
- 51:05could pause time, I think that would be great.
- 51:08I'm I'm, I, I think Jim you hit as well too.
- 51:11Like I'm happier now than I was five years ago, 10 years ago,
- 51:13etcetera. And I had some great times.
- 51:15Look, I feel like I've LED a great life.
- 51:17I've had a lot of experiences, a lot of fun fun stuff that I've
- 51:20done very fortunate in that regard.
- 51:22But yeah, I don't think I would trade youth for the wisdom
- 51:26that's been accumulated over the years.
- 51:28So I feel like we're all, I don't know, maybe this is an old
- 51:31hat question. If you ask a younger person if
- 51:34they would ask, you know, answer it the same way but it feels
- 51:36like we're all on the same page except I'm not going to wear the
- 51:38Plaid pants. I would still feel too
- 51:40self-conscious about that. I felt like a real nerd wearing
- 51:44my Apple Vision Pro on a flight last week.
- 51:47And I did return it by the way, but that that experiment is
- 51:51over. But I have not felt that
- 51:53self-conscious in a very long time putting that thing on.
- 51:56I'm like, I know I'm going to return this, but I got to try it
- 51:58out, see what's like. And yeah, you you totally, you
- 52:01totally hit that question on the on on the head for me as well.
- 52:04Awesome awesome. Well the the you know just as as
- 52:07we as we leave with parting thoughts.
- 52:09I think Jim I think if you if you convinced your your 19 year
- 52:12old son you know the really the the beauty and and and all the
- 52:16the benefits of a 15 year old minivan.
- 52:19I can I can hook you up here I've got something.
- 52:23But if he's got a Mustang, I handed him down my.
- 52:25My old might be a bit like. Frazee Mustang and not good
- 52:30enough. He's a.
- 52:32Senior Mustang. It's a nice car too.
- 52:33I mean, I wish I'll tell you what I had a the the cheapest
- 52:37Chevrolet car that you could possibly have.
- 52:39It only had three cylinders in it for an engine and I was
- 52:42thrilled to have it so. What?
- 52:45What Car was that? A.
- 52:46Mustang is good. Well, I'm not going to tell you
- 52:48because that's a secret question, man.
- 52:49But you'll have to. Type.
- 52:50Guess it. I love it.
- 52:52Yeah. So I mean it's not going to be
- 52:55hard that hard to guess and I think I've changed all those
- 52:57answers anyway. But if you Google three
- 52:59cylinder, it would have been my guess mid to late 90s.
- 53:03Was it a Yugo? Did you have a Yugo?
- 53:05No, it was a Chevy. Oh.
- 53:07OK, it was a Chevrolet brand, let's put it that way.
- 53:10So there's the the trivia for folks.
- 53:12Did you have to crank it up before you drove it?
- 53:16Look, I've heard you. You can't make fun of me because
- 53:18I've heard every single joke. Nothing that you're going to say
- 53:22I've not heard before about that car.
- 53:23But you know what? It was my car.
- 53:25It gave me freedom. I could get wherever I wanted.
- 53:27Jeff, Jeff, this this car is your these are your Plaid pants
- 53:30right here. That was my Plaid pants.
- 53:33I'm glad I outgrew it. Now I'm very happy in my
- 53:35electric vehicle. And yeah, life moves on.
- 53:39Let's go ahead and leave it there.
- 53:40That was a whole lot of fun. Rich, thank you so much for
- 53:43coming back with us and having a conversation.
- 53:45I hope folks will go out and check out beza.com beza and
- 53:48really check out what you guys are doing.
- 53:52I think you guys are doing some really remarkable stuff.
- 53:54And I think there's a lot of applications that, you know, at
- 53:57first glance, me, it was like, oh, OK, it's this.
- 53:59I was like, oh, wait, there's so much more.
- 54:01We'll have links in our show notes for people to check out.
- 54:04Want to connect with you, Rich? Ask you questions?
- 54:06Argue with you politely about Fountain of youth versus, you
- 54:11know, wisdom and age and things like that.
- 54:13We'll also have links to Vasa's website as well, so you can
- 54:16check them out. And yeah, we'll go ahead and
- 54:19leave it there for this week. Thank you again so much, Rich,
- 54:21for taking the time with us. Jim, as always, thanks for your
- 54:23time and thanks for everyone for listening.
- 54:25You can find us on the web, idacpodcast.com or on Twitter or
- 54:28X or whatever it's called by the time you listen to this at IDAC
- 54:32podcast and we'll leave it there.
- 54:34Thanks everyone. And we'll talk with everyone in
- 54:36the next one. Thanks much.
- 54:39You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
- 54:42We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
- 54:46review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
- 54:50website at identity@thecenter.com and find
- 54:54us on Twitter at IDAC Podcast. See you next time on Identity at
- 55:01the Center.