Identity at the Center

Jeff and Jim finally land a long-sought pair of guests: current Gartner analysts Rebecca Archambault and Paul Rabinovich, chair and co-chair of the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit, December 7-9 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas. Rebecca and Paul share their paths into identity, from HSBC and Lotus Notes to a security PhD and aerospace and defense, then preview this year's theme of reshaping identity in the age of AI. The conversation covers the MCP interop session with the OpenID Foundation, why authorization remains so hard to standardize, runtime controls, human-in-the-loop, and intent-based access control for AI agents, IVIP and the end of "light IGA," and why the fundamentals still matter. They close with tips for first-time attendees, how analyst one-on-ones work, the new expo floor neighborhoods, and a few Las Vegas recommendations.

Gartner US IAM Summit: https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/na/identity-access-management-us

Connect with Rebecca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-becky-archambault-4b4285111/

Connect with Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-rabinovich-20b79b8/

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

00:00 Jeff's broken finger update and the Gartner white whale

03:17 Welcome Rebecca Archambault and Paul Rabinovich

04:08 Rebecca's path from HSBC to identity

06:04 Lotus Notes war stories

07:23 Paul's path from a security PhD to identity

08:22 Paul's role in Gartner for Technical Professionals

09:27 Rebecca's coverage: IAM programs, IGA, IVIP, ISPM, ITDR, and CIAM

10:43 How their perspectives changed as analysts

12:50 What to expect at the Gartner IAM Summit

14:54 What's different this year

19:17 The MCP interop with the OpenID Foundation

23:32 Past interops: CAEP and AuthZEN

24:09 What didn't make the agenda

26:36 Decentralized identity and the London Summit

28:32 Rebecca's session: Renaissance in the Age of AI

31:58 Can authorization ever be standardized?

39:42 Standards and authorizing AI agents

42:12 Paul's session: AI agents on a solid access management foundation

46:50 Foundational IAM and the rise of IVIP

49:23 First-timer tips: Conference Navigator, recordings, one-on-ones

55:21 Las Vegas hidden gems

1:00:31 PSA: Caesars Forum is not Caesars Palace

1:04:46 New expo floor neighborhoods

1:05:56 Networking advice

1:07:15 Wrap up: Ask IDAC, IAM 101 series, and the donor page

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Rebecca Archambault, Paul Rabinovich, Gartner, Gartner IAM Summit, Identity and Access Management, IAM, AI Agents, Agentic AI, MCP, Model Context Protocol, OpenID Foundation, Interop, Authorization, AuthZEN, CAEP, Shared Signals Framework, OPA, Cedar, Intent-Based Access Control, Human in the Loop, IGA, IVIP, ISPM, ITDR, CIAM, PAM, Machine Identity, NHI, Zero Trust, Post-Quantum Cryptography, Decentralized Identity, Las Vegas

In this Sponsor Spotlight, Jim McDonald talks with Pranay Yadav, co-founder and CEO of Iden, about why identity governance still runs on tickets and spreadsheets at so many organizations. Pranay came to identity from venture capital at Accel, where he kept hearing the same story from IT teams. SSO arrives early, and everything after it gets tracked by hand.

They dig into how deep governance has to go. Knowing someone has a GitHub account is one thing. Knowing they can approve their own pull requests is another. Pranay explains where SCIM stops short of fine-grained entitlements in SaaS, internal, and legacy apps, why a governance program is only as complete as the weakest app in the stack, how teams can sort apps into P0, P1, and P2 priorities, and when access requests should be automated versus kept in front of a human.

The conversation closes on AI. That covers using it to help practitioners and end users, the harder problem of governing AI agents that share a person's identity, credentials, and long-lived tokens, and why nobody has patience for multi-year identity programs anymore. Pranay also shares the advice he'd give his firstborn: don't typecast yourself.

Made possible with support from Iden. Learn more at idenhq.com/idac

Connect with Pranay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ypranay/

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at idacpodcast.com

00:10 Welcome and Sponsor Spotlight introduction

01:09 From venture capital to identity governance

02:41 Where the friction starts for small IT teams

04:37 Starting with the apps that lack built-in provisioning

05:21 The floor and the ceiling of who feels the pain

06:44 How deep governance has to go

11:35 When knowing "has access" is enough

13:37 Where SCIM fits and where it stops

15:18 Depth in practice: SaaS roles, GitHub, and internal apps

19:13 Breadth and the long tail of apps

21:30 Prioritizing apps into P0, P1, and P2

25:39 What governance means functionally

28:31 When to automate access requests and when to keep a human in the loop

32:18 The experience for the IGA administrator

36:25 AI for governance

43:06 Why governing AI agents is so hard

47:41 No appetite for multi-year identity projects

52:49 Lighter note: advice for a firstborn

56:05 Wrap-up

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Pranay Yadav, Iden, Sponsor Spotlight, identity governance, IGA, identity governance and administration, IAM, SCIM, fine-grained entitlements, RBAC, authorization, access reviews, joiner mover leaver, onboarding, offboarding, provisioning, deprovisioning, least privilege, segregation of duties, audit evidence, connectors, long tail of applications, SaaS governance, internal applications, legacy applications, automation, human in the loop, AI for governance, MCP, AI agents, agent governance, non-human identity, delegated identity, API tokens, Accel

Recorded live from the expo hall at InfoSec World 2026, Jeff and Jim welcome back Joseph Carson, host of the Security by Default podcast, for his third appearance on the show. Joseph explains how his thinking has moved from "AI vs AI" to "AI vs reality" after talking with CISOs at roughly 40 events this year, including stories of agents breaking into systems they were never meant to touch and a CFO vibe coding a family scheduler on a corporate laptop. He walks through his three-tier framework for agent risk (task, operational, and legally binding agents), makes the case that agents need identifiers and audit trails rather than human-style treatment, and describes Identity Under Attack, a Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop exercise he ran at NATO CyCon with identity coins, chaos cards, and dice. The conversation also covers why identity resiliency keeps landing last on the shopping list, what Locked Shields teaches about communication and identity strategy, a sobering prediction for 2027, and what identity practitioners can do today with ephemeral, auditable access. The episode closes with a podcaster gear chat and the difference between AI slop and AI enabled work.

Connect with Joe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephcarson/

Security by Default podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@SecuritybyDefaultPodcast

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com00:00 Intro from InfoSec World 2026 and Jeff's broken finger

02:33 Welcome back Joseph Carson

03:18 From AI vs AI to AI vs reality

05:02 CISO stories: rogue agents and the vibe-coding CFO

06:46 The rise of consumer agents

07:50 A three-tier framework for agent risk

10:52 Onboarding digital workers with a code of conduct

12:39 Identities or identifiers? Estonia's agent identity debate

15:34 Identity Under Attack: a Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop exercise

22:32 Bringing the exercise to conferences

24:49 What surprised Joseph: collaboration across roles

26:52 Common choices and why MFA comes first

28:16 Designing a budget that forces hard choices

29:29 Identity resiliency as an afterthought

31:24 AI as the Mario Kart mushroom

32:53 Lessons from NATO Locked Shields

35:49 Supply chain and third-party risk

37:18 Predictions for 2027

38:59 What identity practitioners can do now

40:23 Vibe coding and governance at AI speed

42:04 Podcast gear and AI-assisted production

48:02 AI slop vs AI enabled

52:17 About the Security by Default podcast

53:45 Wrap-up

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Joseph Carson, Security by Default, InfoSec World 2026, Cyber Risk Alliance, agentic AI, AI agents, non-human identity, agent identity, digital workers, AI governance, vibe coding, tabletop exercise, Identity Under Attack, gamification, NATO CyCon, Locked Shields, MITRE ATT&CK, incident response, identity resiliency, MFA, privileged access, just-in-time access, ephemeral access, least privilege, supply chain risk, third-party risk, AI slop, podcasting

Most cloud security incidents trace back to the customer, and most of those trace back to identity. Jeff and Jim sit down with Mike Small, Senior Analyst at KuppingerCole, to unpack Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) and why identity practitioners should care. Mike explains how identity controls in the cloud have become data defined in code, why ephemeral workloads break traditional scan-then-deploy security, and how CNAPP evolved from static configuration analysis into runtime monitoring and SOC integration. The conversation covers the shared responsibility model, SOC 2 attestations and complementary user entity controls, multi-cloud complexity, and why standards matter for portability and sovereignty. Mike also looks at CNAPP as a security plane for AI, agents as another layer of non-human identity, recent market consolidation, and the cloud as national critical infrastructure. Plus, a detour into amateur radio, Morse code exams, and low-power QRP contacts across the Atlantic.

Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikesmall01/

AI Identity and Agentic Trust: https://www.kuppingercole.com/blog/small/ai-identity-and-agentic-trust

Mike's other writing for KuppingerCole: https://www.kuppingercole.com/people/small

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

00:00 Welcome and fall conference season

02:52 Introducing Mike Small

03:19 From engineer to identity software to analyst

05:07 What is CNAPP and why should IAM care?

07:21 Most cloud incidents are the customer's fault

11:00 Identity controls in the cloud are data

15:17 Static configuration analysis vs. runtime monitoring

19:34 Is CNAPP a product or a platform?

21:07 CSPM, CWPP, CIEM, KSPM and CNAPP capabilities

23:12 The shared responsibility model

27:46 Who defines secure? SOC 2 and complementary user entity controls

31:40 Multi-cloud and the case for standards

35:18 CNAPP as the security plane for AI

40:48 Where the CNAPP market heads next

44:34 Acquisitions and consolidation in cloud security

46:50 The cloud as national critical infrastructure

50:08 How sovereign is a sovereign cloud?

53:12 MCP and the speed of AI standards

53:39 Mike's passion for amateur radio

1:05:20 The CNAPP elevator pitch

1:06:14 Wrap up

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Mike Small, KuppingerCole, CNAPP, Cloud Native Application Protection Platform, cloud security, CIEM, cloud infrastructure entitlement management, CSPM, CWPP, KSPM, shared responsibility model, least privilege, misconfiguration, runtime monitoring, SOC 2, complementary user entity controls, multi-cloud, non-human identity, NHI, AI agents, agentic AI, MCP, sovereign cloud, critical infrastructure, identity standards, MFA, amateur radio, IAM, identity and access management

Bojan Simic, co-founder and CEO of HYPR, returns to Identity at the Center for a Sponsor Spotlight conversation with Jim McDonald. Bojan traces HYPR's path from passwordless authentication to a broader set of identity assurance controls and explains how assurance differs from verification across the full employee lifecycle. He describes what organizations find when they look for worker impersonators, from remote employees outsourcing their jobs to North Korean operatives, and why verification has to continue past day one. The conversation then turns to AI agents: why IAM teams are becoming the HR of AI, how agent identity differs from human identity, why humans can't manually govern agents at scale, and why securing MCP alone misses the full context of an agent's session. Bojan also covers what is slowing passwordless adoption, adaptive risk, alert fatigue, and how identity teams and the SOC can work together. This episode was made possible with support from HYPR.

Connect with Bojan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bojansimic

Learn more about HYPR: https://www.hypr.com/idac

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at idacpodcast.com

00:10 Sponsor Spotlight intro and welcome back Bojan Simic

02:36 HYPR's evolution from passwordless to identity assurance

04:44 How the pace of identity projects has changed

06:01 Agentic AI moves from theory to reality

08:19 Identity assurance vs. identity verification

10:02 Why workforce identity verification is on the rise

13:01 AI-powered social engineering crosses language barriers

14:30 Continuous verification beyond onboarding

17:06 Balancing verification with user experience

18:36 The business problem behind AI agent governance

22:42 How agent identity differs from human identity

24:50 Who owns agent identity? IAM as the HR of AI

27:00 Governing agents at scale and keeping humans in the loop

29:23 Why endpoint control matters for AI agents

31:48 What securing MCP alone can miss

33:20 Deterministic and probabilistic controls

35:00 What is holding passwordless back

37:26 Pilots and letting perfect be the enemy of good

39:25 Advice for leaders on adaptive risk

42:02 Signals that matter and avoiding alert fatigue

43:36 Identity teams and the SOC

45:53 Lighter note: early mornings in New York, family, and the Yankees

50:36 Wrap-up

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Bojan Simic, HYPR, Sponsor Spotlight, identity assurance, identity verification, workforce identity verification, continuous verification, worker impersonation, North Korean IT workers, deepfakes, social engineering, help desk security, AI agents, agentic AI, agent identity, AI agent governance, non-human identity, NHI, MCP, Model Context Protocol, endpoint security, blast radius, least privilege, access reviews, passwordless, MFA, FIDO, adaptive risk, adaptive authentication, alert fatigue, SOC, identity threat detection, IAM

Eve Maler, founder of Venn Factory and author of Mastering Digital Identity, joins Jim McDonald and Jeff Steadman for her tenth appearance on Identity at the Center. Eve shares what she has learned since the book came out, from writing for non-technical executives (and keeping AI out of the manuscript) to the strange places identity ends up on the org chart. The conversation covers treating identity as a product, why identity can be a business model in disguise, how CISOs can influence CIAM when they are not the boss of it, and the identity debt that AI is now calling due. Eve also explains why intent looks more like purpose of use than finer-grained authorization, how contract language can help frame agent mandates, what trust means to humans versus security teams, and the early work on UMA for Agents (U4A) to govern third-party agents through a resource-centric, protect surface mindset. The episode wraps with travel tips from all three frequent flyers.

Connect with Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemaler/

Eve's book "Mastering Digital Identity" - https://masteringdigitalidentity.com/

MyTerms: https://myterms.info/

UMA for Agents: https://u4a.ai/

Kwaai AI Lab - https://www.kwaai.ai/

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

00:00 Introduction and Eve's tenth appearance

02:40 Life since publishing Mastering Digital Identity

04:49 Writing for non-technical executives

06:36 AI and the book writing process

09:00 Identity as a product: feedback from leaders

10:29 The strangest places identity lives on the org chart

11:46 Metrics that work across functions

13:40 Identity as a business model in disguise

15:14 Identity's unhoused problem

16:56 Who is accountable for identity?

18:33 Security versus usability

20:43 Is identity the product or part of the product?

24:04 Normalizing product replacement

25:53 CISOs, CIAM, and "You're Not the Boss of Them"

28:03 Defining identity debt

29:27 How AI exposes identity debt

31:38 The organizational roots of identity debt

32:52 What intent means for AI agents

34:23 Poisoned intent and contracts as a model

36:15 Laws of robotics and the policy stack

39:21 MyTerms and IEEE 7012

40:04 Trust as a human word

43:29 UMA for Agents and third-party agents

47:27 The protect surface and what practitioners should consider

51:10 U4A maturity and how to get involved

53:43 Travel tips from frequent flyers

1:02:10 Wrap up

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Eve Maler, Venn Factory, Mastering Digital Identity, identity as a product, identity product management, identity debt, technical debt, CIAM, customer identity, CISO, identity ownership, identity metrics, board-level identity, AI agents, agentic AI, non-human identity, NHI, intent, purpose of use, trust, zero trust, protect surface, UMA, User-Managed Access, UMA for Agents, U4A, third-party agents, MyTerms, IEEE 7012, Kwaai, consent phishing, phishing-resistant authentication, passkeys, NIST 800-63, IAM, identity and access management, travel tips

Shea McGrew, Chief Technology Officer at Maricopa County, returns to Identity at the Center one year after episode 376 to take on a question she first raised at our Identity After Dark session: when does digital identity become critical infrastructure? Jeff and Jim talk with Shea about how a county broadband and digital equity project led her to see digital trust as the thread running through every digital government service, and why that trust depends on identity. The conversation covers building an external identity portal for residents, designing for consent and privacy from the start, why residents extend trust to private platforms more readily than to government, the right to be forgotten, data governance across departments, and where decentralized identity and verifiable credentials might fit. Shea also shares her view on access reviews as a learning journey, what it would take to trust AI agents with certifications, and whether an agent could ever be considered a citizen. Plus, potatoes and the proper way to cut a sandwich.

Connect with Shea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shea-mcgrew-6b82a36/

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

00:00 Welcome to Identity at the Center (or AI at the Center)

02:19 How Jim and Jeff met, and how the podcast started

04:09 Jeff's fall conference schedule

06:39 Do you want IDAC content over the holidays?

07:32 IDPro membership and introducing Shea McGrew

08:15 Looking back at Identity After Dark

10:44 Zero trust progress one year later

12:04 From device identity to external identity and broadband

16:04 What counts as critical infrastructure?

19:00 External identity requirements in government

21:04 The blast radius of identity failure

23:06 If identity is critical infrastructure, who owns it?

24:26 What other public sector leaders are saying

26:40 One person, many identities

28:40 How government earns resident trust

32:37 Why not just copy Amazon?

35:02 A right to be forgotten in the US?

36:22 Governing data across department boundaries

38:30 Decentralized identity and the ownership problem

41:30 Tokenization and existing blockchains

42:34 The digital trust umbrella

45:56 Park passes versus benefits and courts

49:19 Does an official designation unlock anything?

51:03 Access reviews: security theater or essential?

55:26 Would you trust AI agents with access reviews?

58:36 Can an AI agent be a citizen?

1:02:20 More questions than answers

1:04:24 Lighter note: If you were a potato

1:07:55 Bonus: How do you cut a sandwich?

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Shea McGrew, Maricopa County, critical infrastructure, digital identity, digital trust, public sector identity, government identity, external identity, CIAM, citizen identity, resident identity, digital services, broadband, digital equity, zero trust, device identity, IGA, access reviews, access certifications, consent, privacy, right to be forgotten, data governance, decentralized identity, verifiable credentials, blockchain, tokenization, identity assurance, AI agents, agentic identity, non-human identity, NHI, human in the loop, Identity After Dark, IAM, identity and access management

Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder of C1.ai (formerly ConductorOne), returns for his third appearance on Identity at the Center. Alex walks Jim and Jeff through the rebrand to C1.ai and why the .ai matters: identity now covers humans, workloads, and agents. The conversation opens on launch week and the new App Hub, built around a question many CIOs and CISOs are facing. What happens when everyone in the company becomes a builder and vibe-coded apps start running critical workflows?

From there, Alex frames the difference between humans, software, and agents using two dimensions, trustworthiness and determinism, and explains why agents that "goal max" call for runtime enforcement instead of relying only on after-the-fact reviews. He breaks down the Hugging Face breach, where an OpenAI agent under evaluation escaped its sandbox in pursuit of better eval results, and lays out six control points for agent security: identity, the harness, network egress, data and tools, the LLM gateway, and credentials.

The group also covers why IGA fundamentals speed up AI adoption, three buckets of agents (SaaS, enterprise, and personal productivity), agents evaluating other agents, governed swim lanes over shutting things down, and the slept-on problem of credentials sprawling across endpoints. Plus girl dads, boy families, and the return of the Royal Octopus.

Made possible with support from C1. Learn more at c1.ai/idac

Connect with Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbovee/

Learn more about C1: https://www.c1.ai/idac

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at idacpodcast.com

00:00 Intro

00:33 Welcome back, Alex Bovee

01:28 From ConductorOne to C1 and the .ai rebrand

04:14 Launch week and the App Hub

07:07 Farm-to-table software and the limits of off-the-shelf SaaS

09:56 The real risks of vibe-coded apps

12:52 Humans, software, and agents: trust and determinism

17:10 UARs matter more for agents

17:59 What happened in the Hugging Face breach

21:23 Six control points for securing agents

25:38 Where should teams focus first?

31:33 Meeting customers where they are

33:02 Why IGA basics come before AI adoption

34:27 AI accelerates bad IAM

35:45 Governance versus business speed

37:51 SaaS, enterprise, and personal productivity agents

41:19 Runtime enforcement and agents evaluating agents

44:22 Can you train an agent not to goal max?

47:33 Governed swim lanes, not shutdowns

50:33 Publishing a vibe-coded app through App Hub

53:03 The slept-on credential problem

56:04 Girl dads, boy families, and the Royal Octopus

1:00:54 Wrap-up

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Alex Bovee, C1, C1.ai, ConductorOne, Sponsor Spotlight, identity and access management, IAM, identity governance, IGA, AI agents, agentic AI, agentic enterprise, non-human identity, NHI, workload identity, machine identity, vibe coding, App Hub, Hugging Face breach, OpenAI, agent evals, goal maxing, runtime enforcement, runtime security, MCP, MCP gateway, LLM gateway, network egress, agent harness, just-in-time credentials, secrets management, shadow AI, user access reviews, UAR, joiner mover leaver, delegated authorization

Jeff flies solo for episode 450, joined by Alexis Bernthal, an associate on RSM's technology risk consulting team who found her way to the podcast through a corporate-wide email and a contact form submission that led to an invitation to Identiverse. They trace how Alexis went from failing a high school computer science class to finishing a CS degree, and how a topic on the show, role-based access, first put identity and access management on her radar. Alexis walks through what technology risk consulting looks like day to day, her first industry conference experience at Identiverse (including Identibeer, sessions on agentic identity and transaction tokens, and a Women in Identity gathering), and the blog she started at AlexisBernthal.com to document her own journey. The conversation turns to what it takes to bring more early-career people into identity: the perceived technical barrier, the value of mentorship and simply introducing yourself at conferences, and whether seniority is really a prerequisite (Jeff's own path started with programming parking lot lighting identities at Walgreens). They close things out with a browser tab hot take and a warning about what not to leave open during a screen share.

Connect with Alexis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-bernthal/

Visit her website: AlexisBernthal.com

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

00:10 - Introduction and upcoming conference schedule

01:48 - Guest introduction: Alexis Bernthal

02:10 - How Jeff and Alexis met and the podcast's origin story

08:12 - How Alexis got into IT and landed at RSM

11:02 - What technology risk consulting actually involves

14:34 - A day in the life, plus RSM's Power of Love campaign

17:15 - How identity first showed up on Alexis's radar

18:48 - Identiverse: Alexis's first-ever conference

21:31 - Enthusiasm, Identibeer, and standout sessions

26:06 - AlexisBernthal.com and her own podcast with her dad

28:35 - What surprised her most about IAM

30:05 - Jeff's identity-as-a-language analogy

37:49 - Breaking into IAM without a technical background

41:21 - Learning by being in the room, plus IDAC's website Easter eggs

46:23 - ID Pro, mentors, and shout-outs to the RSM digital identity team

49:58 - What's holding the next generation back from IAM

54:19 - Introducing yourself at conferences and meeting people where they are

59:30 - Jeff's own accidental start in identity, programming parking lot lights

1:04:00 - Luck, networking, and today's job market

1:08:03 - Advice for new grads breaking into the field

1:10:26 - Where Alexis sees her IAM journey heading

1:12:59 - Lightning round: how many browser tabs is too many

1:17:44 - A cautionary tale about screen sharing

1:20:12 - Wrap-up and thank you's

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Alexis Bernthal, RSM, technology risk consulting, identity and access management, IAM, role-based access, Identiverse, Identibeer, ID Pro, agentic identity, transaction tokens, career development, mentorship, networking, early career, digital identity, authentication, authorization, single sign-on

George Fletcher joins Jeff Steadman and Sean O'Dell for a Decoded deep dive into transaction tokens (Txn-Tokens), the OAuth Working Group specification designed to secure requests as they move across microservices. George explains the problem transaction tokens solve: hop to hop security gaps, replayed access tokens, and the difficulty of tracking a single transaction across a graph of internal services. The conversation covers the anatomy of a transaction token, including the subject, audience, scope, and TXN claims, how a token's time to live should be scoped to the transaction itself, and why immutable parameters prevent tampering mid chain. George and Sean also explore how transaction tokens apply to AI agents and delegated authorization, referencing draft work on agent specific claims and cross domain trust. The episode closes with practical starting points for organizations of any size, including open source options and where to track the specification through the IETF OAuth Working Group.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Transaction Tokens (base draft): https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-oauth-transaction-tokens-11.html

Transaction Token Chaining Profile (Cross Domain Trust): https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-fletcher-transaction-token-chaining-profile-02.html

Transaction Tokens for Agents: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-araut-oauth-transaction-tokens-for-agents-00.html

Tokenetes: https://tokenetes.io/

OAuth Working Group: https://github.com/oauth-wg

Decoded by Identity at the Center:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Sean O'Dell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanodentity/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

00:15 Introduction and catching up with Sean O'Dell

01:25 Introducing today's topic, transaction tokens and zero trust

02:26 George Fletcher joins the show

02:41 George's path into identity, from AOL to the Liberty Alliance

04:22 The problem that led to transaction tokens at Verizon Media

09:01 What a transaction token is, in plain terms

10:25 The specific problem transaction tokens solve

11:43 Transaction tokens versus a short lived access token

13:48 Delegated authorization, traceability, and the TXN claim

22:04 How long a transaction token should live

27:13 Local AI, vibe coding, and shrinking token lifetimes

28:45 What is inside a transaction token, the core claims

35:39 Call chains and the transaction context claim

39:05 Applying transaction tokens to AI agents

41:08 The transaction tokens for agents draft and the ACT claim

43:37 Getting started with limited resources, open source options

46:32 Scaling transaction tokens at a larger organization

50:38 What transaction token nirvana looks like

53:31 Whether this replaces a standard OAuth server

55:59 Where to learn more, the IETF OAuth Working Group

58:09 Cross domain trust and calling outside the enterprise

1:01:38 Alternatives to transaction tokens and adoption incentives

1:05:16 George's summary of the conversation

1:07:26 Sean's closing thoughts and takeaways

1:09:19 Wrap up and close

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Sean O'Dell, George Fletcher, Practical Identity, transaction tokens, Txn-Token, OAuth, OAuth Working Group, zero trust, microservices, access tokens, JWT, authorization, delegated authorization, agentic identity, AI agents, call chain, token exchange, TXN claim, scope claim, Verizon Media, IETF, Keycloak, Tokenetties, cross domain trust, Decoded