Latest / Identity at the Center / #345 - IDAC Mailbag - April 2025 Edition

Transcript

#345 - IDAC Mailbag - April 2025 Edition · Identity at the Center

0:00
And then you've got to scan AQR code and then you've got to type
0:02
that code in. And then you've got to type the
0:03
next code in. And it's just, it's a really
0:06
terrible user experience. It's, it's secure more than an
0:10
SMS. But when you start putting hoops
0:12
in front of people and it makes it difficult to register, it's,
0:15
it's the old abandoned shopping cart scenario, like, OK, this,
0:19
forget this, this is taking too long.
0:20
I'm going to either not do MFA or I'm going to default to a
0:23
less secure model. Yeah.
0:25
Well, OK. I mean, you're right, you're
0:27
right. I know I'm going to isolate that
0:30
and that's going to become, you know.
0:33
Yeah, you're going to have a short out there where I was just
0:35
like you say something, I'm just like, you're right, you're
0:37
right. This is identity at the center.
0:47
If it has anything to do with IAM, This is the go to podcast
0:55
now, your host Jim McDonald and Jeff Stedman.
1:03
Welcome to the Idea Ethos Center podcast.
1:04
I'm Jeff, and that's Jim. Hey, Jim.
1:06
Hey, Jeff, how are you? Happy Monday morning.
1:09
Hey, how are you? It's it is Monday morning.
1:13
I know and I'm all my second cup, so I'm starting to get my
1:17
act together a little bit. But you know, I spent the
1:21
weekend kind of working on an assessment project for one of
1:26
our clients, like assessing the maturity of the IM program.
1:31
And I kind of thought back like, where do you, where is the
1:35
value? What is the value of what I'm
1:36
doing? Where's the client going to
1:38
benefit from this information looking at things and say, all
1:42
right, this is a maturity on like a maturity scale of like 0
1:46
to 5 is kind of the common, the common consulting maturity CMO,
1:51
my if you will, what it where do you see the value in doing an
1:57
exercise like that? Well, I think it's helpful to
2:00
take a step back at certain points and say, OK, how are
2:03
things going? What are we doing, what are we
2:05
missing? We get buried a lot in
2:06
operations mode and just kind of day-to-day.
2:09
And so I think there's value of periodically, maybe it's once a
2:11
year, maybe it's every other year, maybe it's more frequent,
2:13
kind of depends on the maturity I guess where you're at.
2:16
And I know how quickly the the environment is changing, but
2:19
yeah, I mean, take a step back and say, hey, how are things
2:21
going? This is kind of like a it's kind
2:22
of like a recap episode of your favorite show, right?
2:25
OK, what do we miss? Are we on the same page?
2:29
And then let's set the, set the, set the new frame to go forward.
2:33
Yeah, yeah. And I, I feel like I've been
2:35
doing these for, you know, 1213 years of doing identity
2:39
consulting. And I think everybody wants to
2:41
start off with this assessment, but I start questioning myself
2:46
sometimes like, OK, why is what I'm doing important?
2:49
What is the value that's going to come out of this?
2:51
And I came up with really three things that the exercise really
2:55
helps with. And the first one is just kind
2:59
of the the point in time to say, this is where we were on such
3:04
and such a date. We had somebody come in, do a
3:07
maturity assessment around like how well do we govern our
3:10
program? How do we do, how are we doing
3:13
with identity life cycle, how are we doing with authentication
3:16
so that you can then snap that line again three years, five
3:20
years down the road to see how much progress you've made.
3:23
The one thing I will say to keep in mind is that, you know, you
3:27
snapped that line today, 3-5 years down the road thing that
3:31
the line in terms of what is like a level 2 maturity is going
3:36
to change. So looking back at some decks
3:38
from you know, a decade ago and looking at some of the
3:42
assessment around authentication, there's a lot of
3:46
stuff around you should really need to use multi factor
3:49
authentication. You should not.
3:50
That's a whole strategy you should all.
3:52
Strategy. Well, you know what the time is
3:55
like, people were like, you know, do we really need that?
3:59
And I think you know, there's no mention of password list, no
4:03
mention of pass keys, things like that, or.
4:06
Quantum or AI or any of the buzzwords this you know that
4:11
we're seeing now. Yeah, no distributed identity,
4:14
nothing. So I, what I'm saying is that
4:17
the, the line, you know what it takes to be like at any given
4:21
level of maturity, that line moves over time.
4:25
You know, just having MFA everywhere, there's no longer
4:27
like, Oh yeah, you got your, all of your ducks in a row.
4:31
I'm not knocking MFA or saying you shouldn't have MFA
4:34
everywhere. What I'm saying is like it, it's
4:36
not what it was 10 years ago. Well, even the methodologies
4:40
have changed, right? It's like SMS used to be the
4:42
gold standard, now it's the. People make fun of it.
4:48
Almost. Yeah, well, it's easy to
4:50
exploit, but again, you know, we're dealing with a curve of
4:54
progress. As things go up, things become
4:57
more, more or less secure depending on what's going on.
4:59
The world. Turns out SMS is totally
5:01
unencrypted and there's plenty of back doors.
5:03
And if I don't know if you've ever read about SMS behind the
5:06
scenes, it's like basically like an unencrypted channel that
5:09
everybody has access to if if you're like a telco operator.
5:11
Oh yeah. I mean, that's why they they
5:13
tell you now if you're doing cross-platform texting that you
5:17
should just assume it can be read.
5:21
Exactly. So, OK, so the second thing that
5:24
I came up with is that it gives you an idea of prioritization.
5:28
So if you say this is your current maturity, this is your
5:31
target maturity and you'll cross the landscape of all your
5:35
different areas of IAM capabilities, you start to
5:39
highlight like, oh, we need to be at level 4 maturity.
5:42
That's where we're going to have our our program where it's like
5:45
coming along. And right now we're at a level 1
5:48
maturity. So that that becomes maybe it
5:52
just helps highlight the area focus, if it wasn't clear to you
5:55
already, or maybe it starts to just, you know, kind of support
6:00
what you already suspected. So that's the second thing is
6:04
prioritization. And then I think the third thing
6:07
is going through the exercise, documenting how things are in
6:10
the current state just provides justification for why you need
6:15
to make investments. So it's kind of the detail
6:18
behind the assessment. So it's the exercise spits out
6:21
all these things. You know, I, I think the way you
6:25
kind of the, the way I've always approached getting to an
6:28
assessment is like doing workshops, meeting with people
6:31
who are the stakeholders, people who are doing the IEM program on
6:35
a day in and day out basis. Plus the people who, you know,
6:40
manage or oversee information security, human resources, all
6:45
the areas that plug into the identity program and getting
6:50
their opinions. Pulling all that together really
6:53
kind of shows you where you ranked today in terms of, you
6:57
know, when you match up. Here's how we do I, here's what
7:00
we expected. If I, you can kind of start to
7:03
put together where you rank from a maturity perspective.
7:08
Yeah, you get all those inputs from different areas, and it's a
7:11
good opportunity also to celebrate wins and victories,
7:13
too. It's like, hey, look how far
7:14
we've come based on where we were, you know, a year ago or
7:17
six months ago or whatever it may be.
7:20
Or even if you're regressing, right, if your program really
7:22
hasn't moved at all in three years, you can show that, hey,
7:26
the, the industry continues to move, the hackers, the bad guys
7:30
continue to move. You know, things like 0 trust,
7:34
even though maybe they existed, not many people were doing it
7:37
before. Now everybody's doing it.
7:39
There's a reason behind that. We're falling behind just by not
7:44
doing anything, just by not investing.
7:47
Yeah, That might be a tough discussion to have is if you're
7:49
in charge of an IM program and to report back and say, well,
7:52
we're not better at having nothing's moving, why are we
7:55
doing this? So you've got to be careful on
7:57
that messaging. I've seen a lot of times where
8:00
you're dealing with some maybe a new IM program manager and
8:04
they've inherited this beast and they actually want lower scores
8:08
because they want to reflective reality that, you know, this has
8:13
been under invested, under invested isn't going to to work
8:16
here any longer. And now we need a strategy to go
8:18
from under invested very immature to a future state.
8:23
That's a lot different. I get your point though.
8:25
I mean, you know, you know, who wants to get a report card of
8:29
all CS and DS and maybe some FS if you're the one responsible
8:33
for pulling it together? Yeah.
8:36
So hopefully, hopefully it's going better.
8:38
But there is value obviously in sharing that message because I
8:42
think a lot of people run into organizational change being very
8:46
difficult to actually move forward with things.
8:48
And, you know, I think you and I both find as we, you know, talk
8:51
with, you know, our clients and stuff like that is most people
8:54
know what they want to do, what they should be doing, but
8:56
they're encountering the roadblocks above or to the size
8:59
of them as preventing progress. Could be budget, could be
9:02
resourcing, could be timing, you know, whatever it may be.
9:06
I think sometimes the value of an assessment is it gives you a
9:09
little bit of a CYA to say, OK, we told you where we're at now.
9:14
Something happens and it has to do with this thing that we've
9:18
assessed. You can't just say you didn't
9:20
know about it. Every organization is making a
9:22
conscious decision on on the risk they're going to accept.
9:25
And sometimes that acceptance of risk to their security is by not
9:30
doing anything. They're not funding it, they're
9:32
not resourcing it, they're not treating as a priority.
9:34
So hey, you know the IM program told the right people and the
9:39
decision was still made not to do anything about it.
9:41
OK. That's a risk decision.
9:43
I've always thought exactly the way you just laid out there, you
9:48
know, it is a little bit of CYA, but it's not just CYA.
9:53
It's you know, you're doing your job because you don't get to
9:58
make the decision of we're going to spend $1,000,000 or we're not
10:01
going to spend $1,000,000. I think you make the case, you
10:05
showed that here are the risks doing something about these
10:09
risks in terms of mitigating them as a cost associated either
10:13
make the investment or you don't make the investment.
10:16
You live with the risk and accept it where you spend the
10:19
money. But you don't get to do both.
10:21
You don't get to not spend the money and have the risk go away.
10:25
Now that would be magic if that if that were to to take place.
10:30
So a lot of people working weekends, maybe I don't.
10:32
Yeah, well, I mean, I am as a 24/7 job.
10:35
You know, it'd be nice if the threats and the risks would
10:37
schedule themselves like any other calendar appointment, but.
10:40
Well, they do seem to schedule themselves.
10:42
They happen on Friday night and they happen before long holiday
10:47
weekends. Yeah, because they know people
10:48
are going to be out of the office and sure, it's a smart
10:50
time to make an attack or or whatever.
10:52
Maybe. So take advantage of that.
10:54
Exactly. All right, Speaking of CYA, I'm
10:57
going to give you a couple seconds here while I read off
10:59
our discount codes for the upcoming conferences.
11:01
You can take a sip of your coffee.
11:05
So this is the last week that you're going to be in the US.
11:07
You're heading off to Berlin for the Cooper your Coal conference
11:11
coming up. So for those who are so
11:14
inclined, May 6th to the 9th, Jim and I will both be at the
11:17
European Identity and Cloud Conference put on by Cooper your
11:20
coal. If you use the code ID AC25,
11:23
MKO, better use that code quickly because conference is
11:26
only a couple weeks away at this point.
11:27
So you want to use that, get 25% off and hope to see a lot of
11:32
friendly faces there. I think we both got some
11:35
identity or plans while we're in the area.
11:37
And Jim, ahead of time, you're going to Norway, so I think
11:40
you're going to do one there. I think there's a river cruise
11:43
that we're both signed up for while we're there.
11:45
So a lot of fun activities and I'm looking forward to seeing a
11:49
lot of friendly faces. So we got that and then just a
11:53
few weeks later, we've got Ideniverse in Las Vegas.
11:55
So that's June 3rd, the 6th. And if you use the code IDV 25-I
12:00
D AC25, that'll get you 25% off. We'll have both of those codes
12:04
in our show notes as well as on the homepage at idcpodcast.com
12:08
so people can check that out. Jim, you and I are getting very
12:11
close to getting Ideniverse kind of finalized.
12:14
I, I'm going to go ahead and just put out there, we are going
12:16
to kick off the Expo hall opening night.
12:20
I think Tuesday night, whatever that is, sort of first on deck
12:23
in the Expo hall. We're going to be reprising the
12:27
Family Feud style game show that we did at Syndicate last year.
12:30
I think right now we're still have a working title of
12:32
Identimatch for legal purposes and for trademark purposes.
12:39
So we're working on putting that together.
12:40
But we got about 1/2 hour that we'll do another kind of game
12:42
show. You're going to be a team
12:43
captain, I'm not sure who the other team captain is going to
12:46
be yet, but hopefully you're working with that person and
12:49
also figuring out who your team mates are going to be as part of
12:52
that. And then we'll have, you know,
12:54
judges and, and things like that to kind of help us out.
12:56
But looking forward to to bring in that Tide universe for the
12:58
first time. I'll be team captain, You'll be
13:01
Steve Harvey, right? I will be Steve Harvey Standen,
13:05
shorter, less mustache version of Steve Harvey.
13:09
I'd probably you're going to tone it down a little bit in
13:12
terms of the clothing, right? Yeah, I don't have any like long
13:15
yellow Sport coat, you know, suit jacket type things.
13:19
So you'll probably see me in my, in my, you know, blue Sport coat
13:22
with AT shirt. Yeah, well, we're joking around
13:25
the other day. I think it was Steve Harvey
13:27
that, you know, mess up during the Miss Universe pageant and
13:31
said the wrong person won. I mean, that's like the
13:34
ultimate, like I, I, you hate for it to happen that somebody
13:39
who somebody gets defined by one mistake that they made.
13:43
But I don't know, Steve, Charlie outlived that.
13:46
Maybe it's just stuck in my head.
13:47
Well, he's got so much other stuff that he does, I don't
13:50
think. I mean, that's just a blip of
13:52
all the things he's done. So I if I'm Steve, I'm not too
13:55
worried about that. It's like, yeah, whatever it
13:56
happens. Yeah, right.
13:59
So that's going to be exciting. We got some podcast episodes and
14:02
I think there's a bunch of stuff going on in the ID Pro Slack
14:05
channel. So definitely want to check out
14:07
ID pro.org and coordinate with those folks.
14:09
I think some people are going to the John Wick experience at Area
14:12
15 earlier in the week. I'm actually going to go later
14:15
in the week with my brother and check that out.
14:18
But lots of stuff going on, so hopefully we see lots of
14:22
friendly faces out there. Yeah, I feel like we're going to
14:24
be pretty busy there. You and I are both facilitating
14:29
panels. We're doing that.
14:32
I Dennis, squabble. I like that name too.
14:36
Yeah, it's kind of cool, right? I I remember just doing like a
14:41
synonym for feud and squabble and match both came up.
14:45
So yeah. So we'll be doing those two
14:49
things and then we're going to record a few podcasts and I
14:52
think we're going to try to do like just men on the street and
14:55
capture some video to have some things to throw on our YouTube
14:58
channel. But overall, I mean, we're going
15:01
to be couple of working dudes. Typical conference for us, man.
15:06
Yeah, well, I hope people will stop by and just, you know, say
15:11
hi, maybe do like men on the street.
15:12
We're not going to make it into anything commercial.
15:15
So they kind of like push your company's and you know business
15:19
that's probably not kosher for the channel.
15:23
So we'll we'll leave it at that for now.
15:25
That's what sponsor spotlights are for.
15:27
So donate early, donate often. That's how we get off to these
15:30
conferences. That's right.
15:31
That's right. And we will have a spot on the
15:33
shelf floor somewhere I believe will be sort of like on the
15:36
entrance off to the side of where the Expo hall is.
15:38
Not quite exactly sure yet, but the CRA team has been a lot of
15:42
fun to to work with and especially Shirley, she's kind
15:44
of. Been.
15:45
Shirley Yep. So OK, so that is all the
15:50
meandering and Babble upfront. Why don't we get to our main
15:54
thing today, which is mailbag? So we've been getting a lot more
15:58
emails, LinkedIn messages, carrier pigeons, SMS texts with
16:03
with questions and things like that.
16:05
So we've got a handful for today and this one is going to be 100%
16:09
listener base from all around the world, including our lighter
16:12
note at the end. So people want to stick around
16:13
for that. So I think, Jim, the way that
16:15
will handle this is I'll read the question, you tell me your
16:19
thoughts on it and then I'll chime in if I have anything to
16:21
add and we'll just kind of go through that.
16:22
Does that work? Sure.
16:23
And by the way, I did cheat and I looked at the questions.
16:26
OK, well, that's fine. Like we want to be.
16:28
Able to have like 15 minutes of mental preparation.
16:32
OK, so let's start with Robbie from India.
16:36
Are passwords ever really going away or are we just stuck with
16:39
them forever? Kind of a this is AI feel like
16:42
this is a very gym question. Like this is a very downer.
16:45
Let's let's open things up with a downer.
16:46
Let's see if we can rescue Robbie from the doldrums.
16:49
Are passwords ever really going to go away?
16:52
So I think at some point, yeah, the, you know, you stop typing
16:58
into a keyboard. So, you know, Speaking of
17:02
password, how's that any different than doing like a Face
17:05
ID or thumbprint? But one thing I found to be true
17:10
in IT is that things that are old keep coming back.
17:14
You know, things that were done in the mainframe mirror, like
17:16
come back and everybody thinks it's just new.
17:19
So I can see some people in a board room 30 years from now,
17:22
maybe on a Zoom call say, hey, I've got an idea.
17:25
Why don't we just come up with something that people, it's like
17:30
a secret that somebody has in their head and then to get into
17:33
our app or whatever they're calling in those days, you just
17:39
give the this thing, we'll call it a password.
17:43
Yeah, So I can see it coming back.
17:45
But so maybe we'll never get rid of them.
17:47
But I think the instantiation of passwords that we see today,
17:51
they're only going to go away because interface change,
17:55
because, you know, it just becomes easier to build an
18:00
application, build a system, and to use some other form of
18:04
authentication other than a password.
18:06
I don't think teams are going to build systems that don't use
18:12
passwords because they understand the Security benefits
18:16
of not using passwords. Yeah, I think, I don't think
18:20
passwords ever really go away. I think they get obfuscated and
18:24
hidden behind the scenes and it will be some sort of password or
18:28
password like mechanism, whether it's certificates or other types
18:32
of you know, keys that might might be behind the scenes.
18:34
So I think the the interaction with them will definitely
18:39
change, but I don't know if it actually goes away.
18:43
And like you said, I mean legacy systems are going to be out
18:45
there. They use passwords and
18:46
retrofitting a mainframe, it's maybe not feasible and maybe
18:51
doesn't make sense. So I hate to say it, they're
18:54
probably around for a while, but I think the usability of them
18:59
will definitely increase, especially as we, you know, come
19:01
together on standards and things like that.
19:02
And it might not, it might not look and feel like a password,
19:06
which is OK as long as it's secure and there is a, a
19:10
process, you know, that that goes along with that to make
19:12
sure that is secure and usable and all that good stuff.
19:15
Do you think that passwords are the password situation today is
19:19
that they're more usable or less usable than they were 10 years
19:23
ago? Define usable because we've
19:26
gotten more complex from a password strength meter.
19:30
Yeah, no, we've gotten more complex.
19:32
I, I, the, the, I don't think I can't be more specific with the
19:36
question because it gets into the answer, which is that we've
19:40
got more complex, but we have to change them less frequently.
19:43
But The thing is, it's like everywhere you go, the password
19:47
standard is different. So if you think about it like
19:49
all the different websites you use, some of them do make you
19:52
change it every so often. You can't reuse passwords, You
19:56
can't use 2 letters that are the same in a row.
19:59
Like where do people come up with these stupid rules?
20:02
Yeah, all these pattern stuff or my favorite my my my least
20:05
favorite right now actually is your password must be between 8
20:09
and 20 characters, no more, no less.
20:12
And you're in this little box. So if you want to have a long
20:16
password, which is, you know, secure and, or use pass phrases,
20:19
right? And things like that, 20
20:21
characters is really limiting to be able to do that.
20:24
So you're, you're artificially impacting the security of your
20:28
system. And that might be a system
20:29
limitation, right? We can't, this field can't have
20:31
more than that because of whatever.
20:33
But I it's, it's, it's gotten out of hand, I think.
20:37
So I, you know, I'm not going to throw any of our fellow, I am
20:41
practitioners on the bus, but I use a retirement site where they
20:50
don't allow special characters. So you can't use a dash, you
20:54
can't use an exclamation point or a hashtag or any of those
20:58
things that I think make the password more complex.
21:02
And they have a minimum strength of eight characters.
21:05
So it's like, come on. And this is a site where you go
21:09
to manage your retirement funds money.
21:13
I, I just think it's absolutely ridiculous.
21:15
Like if you're going lazy. Way to address an injection
21:18
attack. That's that's the way I look at
21:20
it like, OK, if there's, if you're, if you're, if you're,
21:23
you know, if you have a problem with an injection attack, OK, I
21:27
get it right. There's certain characters that
21:29
need to be, you know, obfuscated, moved away,
21:34
restricted, whatever it may be. But to say you cannot use any
21:37
special characters in a password, again, it's it's, it's
21:40
not security, it's security theatre.
21:43
And then and then the the MFA is SMS.
21:48
So you, yeah, put those things to those two things together.
21:51
It's like you got to be kidding me.
21:54
Yeah, I don't know if we answered Robbie's question, but
21:57
I think you and I agree that the password situation needs to get
22:00
better. But I the, the silver lining for
22:03
me again, is I think the interaction with it changes and
22:06
becomes more behind the scenes and plumbing versus, you know,
22:09
the first thing you see when you visit a website or an app, login
22:14
into your ID and password. Yeah.
22:15
And for the practitioners out there, what are the takeaways?
22:18
It's all right, move forward passkeys.
22:22
It's use stronger authenticators than SMS.
22:27
At least make those things an option.
22:30
You know, if your users want to default to SMS, and maybe the
22:34
problem is that 95% would, but you should at least give people
22:38
the option to use stronger security mechanisms, Yeah, and
22:46
get away from using passwords on on your app, especially if
22:50
you're you're protecting is like highly secret.
22:54
Yeah, I I would like to see a better way to do push
22:58
notifications and authenticator type apps and kind of things
23:01
like that. It's a very clunky experience.
23:03
If you're not a, you know, I am person, you have to kind of
23:06
explain, oh, you've got to download the Google
23:08
Authenticator or the Microsoft Authenticator or, you know, the
23:11
I800 other authenticator apps out there.
23:14
And then you've got to scan AQR code and then you've got to type
23:16
that code in and then you've got to type the next code in.
23:18
And it's just, it's a really terrible user experience.
23:22
It's, it's secure more than an SMS.
23:24
But when you start putting hoops in front of people and it makes
23:28
it difficult to register, it's it's the old abandoned shopping
23:31
cart scenario. OK, this, forget this, this is
23:33
taking too long. I'm going to either not do MFA
23:36
or I'm going to default to a less secure model.
23:39
Yeah, OK. I mean, you're right, You're
23:42
right. I know I'm going to isolate that
23:44
and that's going to become, you know.
23:47
Yeah, you're going to have a short out there where I was just
23:49
like you say something and I'm just like, you're right, you're
23:52
right. Yep, Yep.
23:53
OK, let's go to Sarah from the United Kingdom.
23:56
What's one thing in IAM you wish more companies would prioritize
24:01
but often don't? You know, it's interesting.
24:10
So this is one of the ideas that I actually thought of bringing
24:15
up dirt as my opening tirade or my opening rant, if you will.
24:21
So let me ask you a question, user experience, Wayne.
24:26
If you go into an organization, they're very like doing things
24:31
very manually. Maybe they're very decentralized
24:34
and they've got a lot of onboarding forms that end users
24:41
use. They fill out the form to
24:42
onboard somebody, they send it in, and then magically the
24:46
person shows up and all the access is there.
24:49
There's a bunch of people behind the scenes making it all happen,
24:51
but from an end user experience. End user experience is quite
24:56
good, right? They fill out the form, they
24:58
e-mail it away, and then somebody takes care of the
25:00
problem. I don't know if it's good.
25:02
I think it's average and here's why.
25:04
Why am I filling out a form in the 1st place?
25:07
You know the person's coming, you know you're going to pay
25:09
them hopefully, so they should be in some system somewhere.
25:12
Why am I still having to fill out a form in the 1st place?
25:17
We've defaulted to. Oh well they default onboarding
25:21
user experience is a manager or an HR person or somebody an
25:25
admin goes in and says oh Jim is starting today on board him.
25:31
Like why are? Why is I am the last person to
25:33
know about that? Let's say, I mean, let's say
25:36
we're in a very automated version and we say, all right,
25:40
Jeff is the manager. He hires somebody and you know,
25:45
all right, the person comes from the HR system.
25:48
We give them the birth rate rolls, they, you know, I'm sure
25:52
you had to request a laptop for them and maybe a phone and phone
25:57
number etcetera. Anyway, all that goes through
26:01
now what about the more advanced?
26:03
So you know, they're going, you hire somebody to do podcast,
26:08
podcast video editing. So they're going to need XY and
26:11
Z. That's different than the
26:13
average user. There's no role to find for this
26:16
job. So where's the owner's go?
26:19
Does it go on you that you have to go out to the ITSM or go out
26:25
to an IAM system to request all this access?
26:28
Or does somebody supposed to contact you like, or does the
26:32
person just show up and they can't do the job until?
26:37
So to me it's it's those are not a good user experience.
26:43
Having one form to go to, to say, all right, you know, this
26:46
new person starting and they need a laptop and they're going
26:49
to need all the software. Maybe I'll just type it into the
26:52
notes. I'm not saying it's the most
26:55
efficient way or the right way, but from a user experience
26:59
perspective, it's like, oh, I just had to fill out one form
27:02
and they showed up and pretty much they were right off and.
27:05
Working well, I think the user. So it sounds to me like you want
27:09
to prioritize the user experience, which you know, I
27:11
can find no fault in that. No, no, no actually.
27:14
So here's my counter intuitive is, you know, maybe we have to
27:18
de prioritize the user experience.
27:21
Why would you de prioritize the user experience?
27:24
Walk me through that. Gym logic.
27:26
Yeah, right. So I.
27:27
Tied the user experience to in that situation where it's just
27:31
one word form they e-mail around.
27:34
So de prioritize it from the standpoint of like we're not
27:37
going to do that anymore, but prioritize it from the
27:40
perspective that you have to mimic at least as good of a user
27:46
experience as what existed with the manual form.
27:49
I mean, if you're trying to replicate manual processes with
27:52
your automation tools, I think you're thinking about this in
27:55
the wrong way. The whole point is to be more
27:57
data-driven. You know, you know someone's
27:59
coming on boarded, you know, and they're in the work day system
28:02
or whatever your HR platform is, take that data and do stuff with
28:05
it. You spent money on automation,
28:06
so automate like what's the problem here?
28:09
Stop, stop, stop making busy work for people, managers, HR
28:13
people. Stop making fill out forms.
28:16
Now I know I'm being probably a little bit pie in the sky Ultra
28:19
Stickler may be, but if you have the technology to automate and
28:23
you've got the data and you think the data is in a good
28:25
enough spot where you can't automate, automate.
28:30
Don't do it half ass. Yeah, no, I think maybe I was
28:33
trying to be a little overly creative with the answer here,
28:37
but you can't take a step back in terms of the user experience.
28:42
I, I part of that user experience is psychological.
28:45
In other words, sucky. You're the manager and you
28:47
wouldn't know that when the your new, your new hire shows up that
28:52
he or she is going to have everything they need.
28:54
They're going to have their laptop, they're going to have
28:56
all their tech, but they're also going to have all the access
28:59
that they need. You should at least kind of go
29:02
through and like be able to see in kind of a dashboard setting.
29:06
Like here's all the things they need that they're going to get
29:09
from an automation perspective, and here's all the things that
29:13
maybe do need to be requested. Maybe after you go through that
29:17
list, you're like, oh, Adobe Premiere is not on that list.
29:21
I got to make sure that they get Adobe Premiere.
29:24
But do they need that day one? I'd argue maybe not.
29:27
How many people hire and are doing their full job within
29:30
seconds of onboarding? Usually the first couple days
29:33
is, you know, going through onboarding training or company
29:36
training or, or things like that.
29:39
Then maybe I'm making an argument for prioritizing 0
29:43
standing privilege or just in time privileges.
29:46
Yeah, we're talking about getting access to a whole bunch
29:48
of things that they may or may not even use right away.
29:51
So why not be more dynamic with that decision and say make it
29:55
more self-service? I mean, we all know how to use
29:57
Amazon and buy stuff. Nobody taught us how to do it.
29:59
But if I want to go in and, you know, get a new camera, I can
30:03
click up a couple buttons and it'll be delivered to me pretty
30:06
quickly, you know, within a couple days for the most part.
30:09
Why not take that same model and make it more self-service for
30:12
those people say, oh, I'm going to be doing some video editing.
30:14
OK, which video editor do you want to use?
30:16
Adobe Davinci Final Cut. You know XYZ, whatever it may
30:19
be, select the one you want, click the button and boom, it
30:23
provisions it. You have the tools from an
30:25
automation standpoint. I think your bill won being
30:27
overly creative now. OK, So what's the answer?
30:32
Like what is the one thing you wish companies would prioritize
30:35
but often don't? Because we went, you went down
30:37
the user experience role and then I'm not sure if you argued
30:41
it for or against that the prioritization.
30:43
I think, I think I may try to be creative by arguing against it,
30:48
but I think in the end of the day, I argued for it, which was,
30:52
you know, you have to kind of think about it from multiple
30:56
aspects and make sure that you're not taking a step back
31:01
with automation. Because I think our minds are
31:04
wired toward let's say things that are manual, automate them.
31:08
That's not always a better user experience if it's not well
31:11
thought through. Yeah.
31:13
And I think sometimes we we stop automating, we say, oh, that's
31:15
good enough, forget it. And then you start leaving, you
31:18
know, systems on the table from like an integration standpoint
31:21
to, to further that automation and automation can be done much
31:24
different things. Doesn't have to mean like fully
31:26
on board, fully off board and everything is, you know, In
31:29
Sync, right? In this magical world.
31:31
There's the reality of things come in and I think you can kind
31:34
of find what what a win looks like.
31:36
I would argue something else for prioritization.
31:39
I think that's actually running your IM as a program
31:43
strategically instead of quarter by quarter, month by month,
31:47
fiscal year by fiscal year and not really having a strategy or
31:51
plan of where you're where you're going.
31:53
So I would like to see more companies think about identity
31:58
from more strategic terms, especially at a program level.
32:01
What are you trying to do? What are your objectives, you
32:03
know, from a program perspective versus oh shoot, we got to get
32:06
this thing in because it's next quarter or it's this app is
32:10
going live and we're band aiding everything over the time.
32:12
And I think that tends to lead to overly complex IM
32:15
environments and the governance isn't there for policies or
32:19
standards or even procedure. And so I'd like to see more of
32:23
the people in the process side of IM have more focus rather
32:26
than just, hey, we slapped a technology on it and that'll fix
32:29
everything. Yeah, I, you know, I also think
32:34
when people are putting to you that their IM strategy, some
32:36
people are wired to think that a strategy is a list of products
32:42
and an IM strategy is not a list of products.
32:45
It's that that must play a role but a few process and
32:49
technology. And I know this sounds cliche,
32:52
but it's as true as ever with I am.
32:55
Yeah, that's a good sound bite. We'll just leave it there.
32:58
Got that one out now as well. All right, let's go to our
33:01
friend Carlos from the USA. How do you see AI really
33:06
impacting identity governance in the next few years?
33:08
What is hype versus reality? Welcome to this portion of AI at
33:14
the Center. You know, I, I really think that
33:18
where AI is going to make the differences for the ability for
33:24
people to kind of not have to know how to do things, but just
33:28
to go into some kind of interface and say, this is what
33:31
I'm trying to accomplish. For AI to figure out what they
33:35
need and they get to the right place, perhaps interpret the the
33:40
queries that they're making and turn them into action.
33:44
I think identity is hopefully there's something that people
33:48
don't have to do every day so they forget, you know, if a
33:52
couple weeks pass between business to IM systems, where to
33:58
go to do things. And I think AI could be a huge
34:02
help in that. So kind of it is from a user
34:05
experience perspective, I think that's probably one of the
34:08
biggest areas that you're going to see AI show up because I
34:13
think a lot of the the back end things that you could have AI
34:17
do. I think people are afraid to
34:19
touch right now. They're afraid to turn over to
34:21
AII. Don't you know?
34:24
One thing I've always been concerned about is like, does AI
34:27
know the boundaries of what data it can include in terms of
34:31
returning a response to a query? And I feel like a lot of
34:37
developers or product companies, they're actually, they are
34:40
afraid of that. So I think we're going to see AI
34:43
show up the earliest is from an end user perspective on kind of
34:48
more or less the basics of finding things, being able to
34:51
query but be but limiting that pretty significantly.
34:57
Yeah, I I'd agree with that. I think we're already, you know,
35:00
we've talked to several companies already that have
35:01
integrated AI and generative AI specifically for like natural
35:05
language queries, right, or things like that.
35:07
And I think you end up in a spot where I think it will impact the
35:11
user experience first. Because I think that's the
35:15
safest place theoretically to to impact.
35:18
Because I don't know if we're yet to the spot where we would
35:21
trust an AI to configure itself to be secure without somebody
35:27
looking at the code, the workflow, the configuration or
35:31
whatever it might look like to actually make sure that it makes
35:34
sense, it's doing the right thing.
35:35
So I do think of things where it is more accessible, right?
35:38
I, I've forgotten most of the sequel that I would have used,
35:41
you know, 20 years ago to, to query a database looking for
35:44
data in my IGA platform. You know, at this point, I
35:47
should be able to go into a system and say, show me all the
35:50
users that have access to this application or show me all the
35:54
users that do not have MFA enabled or show me all the
35:57
people with this specific, you know, privileged entitlement,
36:00
you know, whatever it might be. That's all just reporting.
36:03
And I think that's, that accessibility is going to make
36:06
it easier to do things with the data that we've been sitting on.
36:09
So I think, I think AI is extremely impactful on that
36:12
side. And that's what's coming 1st.
36:14
And then you will start to see behind the scenes, you know,
36:18
and, and there's companies already working on it, right, to
36:20
configure their tools, Hey, set up a connection to this
36:25
application and my IDP or my IGA or my privileged access
36:31
management system or wherever it may be.
36:32
So I, I think I, I don't think it's, I think it's a little bit
36:36
of hype right now because I think people are excited about
36:39
the opportunities, but I think it's going to quickly turn into
36:42
reality. The question will be, does the
36:44
reality match the hype and how to quickly does that become
36:50
truth? Because I think in 50 years,
36:54
most I am platforms, if they're even going to be, I implied so
36:58
at that point are going to be almost self-sustaining.
37:01
They're going to be a service that you buy.
37:02
And this is the way it works and AI or whatever, right?
37:05
Machine learning language. Things take behind, take place
37:07
behind the scenes, do the work, and you're you.
37:11
Everyone at that point is an end user of the tool, like very few
37:15
admins. For listeners and for
37:18
practitioners, do you think that if you're not using AI in some
37:23
way in your job now that you're falling behind, Are there things
37:27
that you would recommend to practitioners that you need to
37:31
get good at this thing? Yeah, I think you need to.
37:35
It's like anything else, read off on it, experiment with it,
37:38
play with it, understand the benefits and the potential
37:42
drawbacks. I mean, there's no shortage of
37:44
AI tools out there now, right? Between Open AI and Google and
37:48
you know, all the different models out there, Anthropic,
37:51
etcetera, they're all pretty darn good.
37:55
And this is the worst that it will ever be.
37:57
It's only going to get better. Tomorrow's going to be better
38:00
than it was today and so on and so on.
38:01
So I think understanding how you can leverage it for any number
38:05
of reasons, whether it's, you know, helping write a report or
38:07
helping analyze data or, you know, things like that, you
38:11
know, definitely you want to stay on top of it.
38:13
I think where I would be concerned about is when I start
38:16
to hear, well, we just have AI doing all the work and there's
38:20
nobody checking it to make sure that it's good.
38:24
That's the part where we're not quite there yet.
38:26
And we need to have people who understand their space, you
38:32
know, whether it's authentication or authorization
38:34
or governance processes, right, or whatever it may be, somebody
38:38
still has to check that to make sure that that is still correct
38:40
because AI still hallucinate and they go off the off the deep end
38:44
sometimes. And so you need people who know
38:47
their stuff to call out the AI or whatever you're using, right,
38:51
to make sure that it's good. So it doesn't absolve people in
38:54
the IM world of not knowing their stuff.
38:56
You still have to know your stuff.
38:58
Yeah, I commented on a A blog article because the focus group
39:03
put out a blog article. They're an analyst firm and they
39:08
attempted to use AI to put together an analyst paper.
39:13
And I think what they found, which is what I find a lot with
39:16
AI, is it does a fantastic job in terms of putting together the
39:21
shell, in terms of putting together kind of a lot of words.
39:25
And kind of like, oh, man, if you just looked at it without
39:29
actually reading all the detail, you say this is very good.
39:31
But then when you get into the detail, it's like it's not very
39:34
creative. The date is old, things like
39:37
that. And yeah, I mean, is that what
39:40
you find as well? Yeah, I mean, I think this is
39:43
where different models have different strengths and they
39:46
continually are improving things like that.
39:47
I think I find some of the AI services are better at report
39:52
generation, writing skills, basically.
39:54
Others are better at analyzing the data and putting it together
39:58
in a way, and others, you know, are just better at interpreting
40:01
actions. So I think there's still a long
40:04
ways to go for all the different AI services, but it's exciting.
40:07
I'm, you know, I'm on record as being a fan for it.
40:10
It's going to be used for. Things that probably shouldn't
40:12
be used for, but I think in the in the end it's going to be a
40:17
very valuable tool for a lot of folks.
40:20
Do you have any of the expensive subscriptions?
40:23
No, I stick with the $20.00 a month.
40:25
Once I know that there's like $200 versions out there which I
40:30
don't, I don't think those are worth it for me.
40:33
I think those are probably more for, you know, developers maybe,
40:36
or people who are really taking advantage of it.
40:38
And I subscribe to multiple ones.
40:39
So, you know, between Gemini and ChatGPT and some other ones,
40:43
that's enough for me. So I'm probably spending, you
40:46
know, half that for a variety of services.
40:48
But I think it also gives me an opportunity to look at different
40:50
models and leverage the appropriate model for what it is
40:54
I'm trying to do. So yeah.
40:56
And, and, and look, those prices will come down at some point,
40:59
you know, they'll get the the models themselves will become
41:01
cheaper and more efficient to run.
41:03
So costs will come down, which theoretically gets passed on to
41:06
us as consumers and then it becomes the, you know, bundled
41:09
as part of a service, whatever it may be.
41:11
But I don't, I think this is a, a real cash grab for a lot of
41:13
these companies. So it's going to be very
41:15
interesting to see when, when and how does the, the economic
41:20
model of a subscription to an AI update or change over time?
41:24
Is it just, hey, this is the new streaming platform, you know, we
41:28
all have like 8 different video services that we use.
41:31
Is this now another thing where it's like, this is just another
41:33
subscription that we're all going to be tied to And, you
41:37
know, it gets better theoretically over time and
41:39
maybe there's a war at some point.
41:41
It's like, OK, well, you know, is it Netflix versus, you know,
41:44
Disney Plus? Or is it Anthropic versus open
41:49
AI right? Or whatever it may be.
41:51
Have you seen anything with Apple Intelligence lately?
41:57
I mean, I've seen their attempts at it.
41:58
I I'm not impressed with what they put out so far.
42:00
I think they're, I think they're actually late to the game on
42:02
this. It is it's, I don't, I would say
42:07
it's not good at the moment. It's so it's so, so basic
42:11
compared to what you can see and do with some of the services out
42:15
there, especially if you look at Android phones and what they've
42:17
done with integrating like Gemini into the OS and things
42:20
like that. It's just, it's just further
42:22
along, you know, I have no doubt Apple will catch up at some
42:25
point and move beyond parlor tricks like image playground
42:28
and, you know, stupid stuff like that, that doesn't really
42:31
matter. So I, I think they're behind and
42:35
I think they're doing their Apple thing.
42:37
They're being cautious. They don't they're not inventing
42:40
the scenario. What they're going to be really
42:42
good at is refining how it gets used and how it's integrated,
42:45
things like that. So, you know, I think we're
42:47
still a couple years from where Apple probably should be when it
42:54
comes to integrating AI. But if you want a glimpse of it,
42:56
fire up an Android phone and go into, you know, Gemini and
42:59
Google Assistant and and that that kind of change over is
43:01
happening. It's it's pretty neat.
43:03
Yeah, very cool. There's your AI at the center.
43:08
All right, all right. Let's go to Isabel from France.
43:11
How can smaller companies with limited budgets still build a
43:16
strong IM program? I love this question because
43:19
everybody, nobody has enough money or resources to get things
43:23
done. Most of the organizations you
43:25
know, that I've seen are, you know, scraping by or have to
43:28
justify every dollar and cents. So Jim, how can a smaller
43:33
company with a limited budget still build a strong IM program?
43:38
Yeah, since I have to answer this first, I'm, I'm actually
43:41
picking on something you said earlier about the IM program.
43:44
And you know, if I put my program manager hat on, it's
43:48
about identifying where you spend that small budget, right?
43:51
So there's not one blanket that's like spending on
43:54
authentication or spending on identity governance or
43:59
privileged access. It's figuring out where are your
44:02
needs and making that case and then be able to paint the risk
44:08
landscape. So having a strong I am program
44:10
manager is probably the first investment to identify where the
44:13
rest of the money goes. Yeah, I think that's good.
44:17
I think really setting the stage for your program, what are your
44:21
policies? What are your standards?
44:23
What can you do with what you have?
44:26
You know, I work with a few different nonprofits and
44:29
typically they don't have a ton of money and so they can't
44:32
afford, you know, IGA tools, privileged access management
44:35
tools and, you know, user and entity, you know, behavior
44:39
analysis, right, and ITDR and all the buzzwords.
44:41
So a lot of it is trying to figure out, OK, well, what can
44:44
we do with what we have? And a lot of that falls back to
44:48
inventory. I mean, it doesn't cost money,
44:51
you know, to you don't have to buy a tool, I guess to, to
44:53
inventory things. You probably have some things
44:55
that you can already do to say, OK, well, let's at least get
44:58
user extracts, extracts, you know, from different systems and
45:00
know who has access to what. You know, there's, there's
45:04
things you can do. It's going to be painful in the
45:07
real world if there's an incident or you know, maybe
45:11
onboarding is a real pain because you have to go and log
45:14
into 200 different systems and see, you know, if that person
45:17
exists there. And that's where human error
45:18
comes in. You forget to do a system where
45:20
it may be or onboarding same way.
45:21
It's like takes forever. It's a real challenge.
45:24
And I think, I think it starts with the program itself, people
45:30
and process the technology should be third on that list.
45:35
And hopefully as the organization grows or matures,
45:39
you know, they're, they're investing right size
45:41
technologies versus and hopefully proactively before
45:44
there's a problem that forces them to to invest in it.
45:48
Yeah. So you so often hear though, as
45:50
you talk to companies like we're a Microsoft shop, and this isn't
45:54
to blast Microsoft, but is that the right approach?
45:58
Well, I mean, they have a lot of capability.
46:00
So yeah, it can absolutely be the right approach.
46:03
If you're already on Office 365 or Microsoft 365 and you know,
46:06
you are a window shop, right? All that stuff, there's plenty
46:09
of tools that come along with Microsoft to help you manage it.
46:13
Now, is it 100% coverage? Does it do it the way you wish
46:17
it would do it? Probably not, right?
46:19
I think that's where you see add-ons and third parties and
46:22
all these other products come in to kind of help fill those
46:24
voids. But this is where you decide,
46:27
OK, well, how do we match up our people and process to line up
46:30
with the tools that we actually have?
46:32
Boy, it'd be really great to have Cyber Ark, right?
46:34
Or Beyond Trust or Delinea or whatever it may be, but we can't
46:38
afford it. So how do we take advantage of
46:40
PIM and Entra to do some things, you know, use the tools you've
46:44
got? I, I think, I think there is,
46:47
there is things you can do to to match up your people and process
46:50
with what you've got as best as you can.
46:52
Yeah, that's a great answer. I know I'm going to isolate that
46:56
one as well. All right, let's go to our last
47:01
question. This is from Anders in from
47:03
Norway. I like this question and Jim,
47:06
I'm very curious to see what you're going to answer this one
47:07
is what's your dream guest to have on identity at the center?
47:11
You can pick anybody you want, living or dead.
47:14
Who would you like to have on as a guest for the show?
47:16
I'm. Going to put somebody who I
47:19
actually tried to get on for a guess when he was still with us,
47:24
Kim Cameron, he has seven laws of identity.
47:27
I mean, this is an identity podcast, right?
47:29
So if I answer Abraham Lincoln or something, it's a little
47:32
like, well, that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.
47:35
Kim would have. Been this podcast doesn't make a
47:37
whole lot of sense anyway, it would fit right in.
47:41
True, that's how I would pick. So Kim Cameron, I'm going to go
47:44
a little bit different direction.
47:46
I would like to have more large company CEOs and Csos because
47:54
they're the ones that are really controlling what is happening in
47:57
the real world from an identity standpoint, budget, resourcing
48:00
and things like that. And I think if we can put our
48:03
our message and get into, you know, the minds of some of these
48:07
folks that are controlling the budget and understand what their
48:10
triggers are, that's going to be super helpful for people.
48:13
So I would like to have more, you know, executive level people
48:17
explaining to us why or why not to invest in this thing called
48:23
digital identity. Whether you're a vendor, right?
48:27
I'm, I'm sure there's, you know, there's, there's large companies
48:29
that we've tried to have on in the past that, you know, just
48:31
haven't been responsive on that. And that's fine.
48:34
But I would like to have, you know, really the, the, the
48:38
executive viewpoint come on more because I think if we can start
48:42
to speak their language, that might help folks out there make
48:44
a decision or help help them make their decisions and on how
48:47
they want to present their investment asks right from a,
48:51
from a identity standpoint. And that doesn't have to be just
48:53
technology. It could be, hey, we need
48:54
another person because I'm, I'm falling behind here, or we're
48:57
not delivering the service we need to or it's not secure or
49:00
whatever it may be. Yeah, I'd like to hear if they
49:02
agree that identity's at the center.
49:04
So if you're talking about a siso of like a Fortune 10
49:08
company or something, we talk about identity, the center, like
49:12
are we, are we in our echo chamber just talking to each
49:16
other and all agreeing? I think so.
49:20
I mean, how can we not be right? This is an identity podcast.
49:22
We're talking about identity things.
49:24
We're not a mass market podcast where, you know, we're the first
49:27
thing, unfortunately, that people don't turn on, you know,
49:30
when they're a commute for, you know, millions of people out
49:31
there. We got a lot of listeners but
49:34
and, and viewers, but they're they're in the identity space or
49:37
cybersecurity, right adjacent, right, things like that.
49:40
So there is a lot of education and training, I think to be done
49:45
still for the the public. And I have a a real good friend
49:47
of mine, Jay, we were talking, you know, the other night about
49:50
MFA and he's like, you know, what's that?
49:52
I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, this is other thing, right?
49:54
Yeah. We take MFA for granted and
49:58
there is not a lot of awareness at the general public level who
50:02
are not in the space. So how do we educate those
50:05
folks? You know, how do we, you know,
50:07
bring them into the fold? How do we design solutions that
50:10
are secure by design for them and usable and they don't even
50:14
have to think about security. Should they be thinking about
50:16
security? Maybe, maybe not.
50:19
Is that our job as identity people to do that?
50:20
Yes, it is. So how do we smooth that over?
50:25
Bad answer, Jeff, you make that clip.
50:28
I'm not going to, I'm not going to answer like that one.
50:31
OK, why don't we go ahead and wrap up this episode with a
50:36
lighter note from Sophie from New Zealand?
50:39
I think this is a cool question. So if IAM was a superhero, what
50:45
would its superpower be? So this concept of identity and
50:49
access management has somehow taken life and is now a
50:53
superhero. Or you know what a super
50:55
villain, let's call it. Either way, what would the
50:58
superpower be for that superhero or super villain?
51:01
So we know there are, I am superheroes.
51:04
We've run into them all the time, right?
51:06
A lot of identity programs would just completely fall apart if it
51:11
weren't for the superheroes. A lot of times it's because
51:15
companies have under invested, so people have to kind of become
51:20
superheroes and work crazy hours and things like that.
51:25
So I'm going to talk about those people and what would be the
51:29
special skill that would be able to take the things over the top
51:33
for them. And it would be if they didn't
51:35
have to sleep. So the I am superhero superpower
51:39
would be Sleepless woman or sleepless man and they can stay
51:44
up 24 hours a day working on I. Wow, that sounds like a really
51:48
crappy superpower. I'm not saying I would want it,
51:55
I'm just saying that would be the superpower that the real
51:59
world I am superheroes was probably it was supercharged
52:04
their ability. OK, I'm going to go with more of
52:09
a a super villain in this state and just confusion.
52:14
The the concept of confusion and being able to say what is I am
52:19
really good at confusing people and befuddling them and that
52:23
could be any number of things, right?
52:24
It could be for the end users. They don't really know how to do
52:26
this thing. Why do I have to put a password
52:28
that's 8 to 20 characters can't use any special characters,
52:31
can't have two numbers in a pattern, right?
52:34
It's super confusing, right? Or maybe it's us and the
52:37
identity side is like, oh, we have 80 new acronyms every year
52:40
for all these different services.
52:41
Did you mean this one or that one right?
52:43
And so I think confusion is like the superpower of I am.
52:47
And the hero opposite of that is someone who can clarify that
52:52
confusion, someone who can distill messages down, simplify
52:56
them to make them easily understood.
52:58
That's the that's the opposite side of that yin Yang coin.
53:02
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, man. So I actually, I, the one of the
53:08
most frustrating things to me is like, you know, you've logged
53:11
into whatever application, say you flew an airline, but it's
53:16
been 15 years. And so you go in and you try to
53:19
log in and it says, sorry, you know, go ahead and reset your
53:25
account or it doesn't. That basically doesn't recognize
53:29
your username, your e-mail address.
53:31
So then you go through and you try and register using that
53:34
e-mail address. So sorry, you can't reuse an
53:36
e-mail address. Oh my God.
53:41
I guess I'll give you. Yeah, I I guess I will just
53:45
register as a guest. Yeah, or the favorite 1 is like
53:48
you can't, you know, you try to reset your password and you type
53:51
it in and it won't take it and then you go, OK, well, I guess I
53:54
have to reset my password because it's because.
53:56
You can't reuse your. Right.
53:57
And then say oh you can't, your password can't be the same as
53:59
the current password. Like what?
54:01
Yeah, that's a there's a meme out there for that.
54:03
And it's like the guy with all the numbers flying around the
54:06
said, yeah, that's, that's pretty good.
54:09
So there you go. That is the I am confusion
54:12
supervillain striking again. Like what is going on here?
54:15
Why doesn't this make sense? So hopefully other I am heroes
54:18
come in to save the day and clarify things.
54:21
OK, well, I want to thank all of our listeners who sent that
54:24
stuff in. We, you know, we get a lot of
54:26
messages. We try to respond to the ones we
54:27
can, some of the ones we save up for episodes like this.
54:29
So I think we're already at like maybe 2, maybe 3 mailbags for
54:33
this year, which is great. I'd much rather answer questions
54:37
from people than, you know, try to come up with something
54:40
innovative every week because this is the real world of I am.
54:43
So it's like, all right, well, we're going to have those
54:45
conversations as well, but let's hear from people and what are
54:46
the challenges or what are they, you know, want our viewpoints on
54:48
and stuff like that. And, you know, our opinions can
54:51
certainly change. And I'm sure if we look back on
54:52
the podcast, it's the time. Cancel as you like to say, Jim,
54:55
you know, in 10 years from now, they're like, oh, can't believe
54:57
you guys were talking about that kind of stuff.
54:59
What Cavemen. All right, so let's go ahead and
55:03
leave it there. Let's see.
55:04
Visit the show on the web, IDC podcast.com, like and subscribe.
55:09
That is super helpful for us. Share it with folks out there.
55:14
Visit our YouTube channel, like and subscribe that as well.
55:16
I noticed our YouTube shorts have kind of taken on a life and
55:20
yeah, maybe that's better format for YouTube.
55:22
We'll always have our full episodes up there, but you know,
55:25
we try to have somewhere between one and three minute clips there
55:28
that we that we do for each episode throughout the week.
55:31
And then send us your comments, thoughts, prayers, wishes,
55:36
curses, whatever, you know, send us out on LinkedIn.
55:39
Jim and I was happy to connect with folks out there.
55:41
And yeah, so with that, we'll go ahead and leave it for this
55:45
week. Thank you for watching and or
55:47
listening and we'll talk with you all in the next one.
55:51
You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
55:55
We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
55:59
review, and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
56:02
website at identity@thecenter.com.
56:06
See you next time on Identity at the Center.