This is identity at the center. If it has anything to do with I am, This is the go to podcast now your hosts Jim McDonald and Jeff Steadman. Welcome to the Identity at the Center podcast. I'm Jeff and that's Jim. Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you? Oh, not so bad yourself. Good, good.
Earlier today I I joined a like an annual or quarterly meeting for the 1414 venture group, some of the folks that we had on the podcast in the back in the past Jackie Shobak and Howard Hall and kind of got into you know my perspective on this is the expanding, expanding scope of the identity. Industry, right. We're going from kind of the traditional towers of authentication, authorization, access management, identity, governance, even customer. I am I would say more fits into that.
It's been around for so long and now we've got all these new areas popping up like I TDR, identity proofing, decentralized identity and machine accounts. And so I just kind of expanded on those I I said look there's. A lot of activity going on in these spaces and a lot of companies in stealth and you know, kind of how do you find those companies.
And you know that I don't always have the answer to, But if there are folks out there who are kind of in the stealth mode and want to connect back to them and be able to pitch where they're at, you know, reach out to me and Jeff and you know, we'd be more than happy to make those connections. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a lot of good ideas out there and some, I'm sure stuff we've never heard of them was like, yeah, that's like a no brainer. I was thinking about that before.
And yeah, it's a good group over there too. I mean, just good people. We've had them on the show like said before and hopefully we can connect dots if that's something that you're working on and you want to do an introduction, you know, reach out to Jim myself. We're happy to to make that happen. But I don't know, I mean, I feel like. There's so many untapped potential. Still. Did AI come up at all as part of that conversation? No, I avoided it because, you know, I did.
I wasn't there. Yeah. Because. You weren't there. But from an AI perspective, I did have my AI enhanced headshot. And So what I said was like, there is value in AI, even if you're an AI hater, AI headshots look a lot better. Yeah, the one you texted me was. I got to tell you, man, it was good. It was real good. But I know, really you You square off your jaw and, like, you know, you chisel your chin. I mean, heck, you know what's wrong with that?
I mean, yeah, square off my jaw, the rest of my body, everything. Could use some some more definition, but it was it was a good looking picture. I I'll give you that. My concern is that okay, this is what you look like in the picture and then you end up disappointing someone. In real life you don't like anything like that. You're welcome to my world. Yeah, well, OK.
Speaking of not hopefully not disappointing people as a very awkward transition to, let's talk about the Authenticate conference coming up in October. You and I are going to be there October 16th through the 18th in Carlsbad, CA on a golf course. I think it's the Omni resort, something like that there. I don't have the the full name in front of me, probably should have done that, but if you're listening to this, you can get a discount. I D AC15 podcast gets you 15%
off your in person registration. We had a planning meeting earlier today, Jim, about what we're going to be doing. We're on the main stage. At some point. I think midday we might be the lunch blocker, which is always a great spot to be in. We're part of the keynote, man. Yeah, like, but we're going to run for lunch. We're thinking about like doing like a live podcast style
presentation type thing, right? It's. And we'll have some people on the stage with us, I think kind of thinking about, you know what topics make the most sense. Maybe this is a call out for people who are listening. Are there things that you would like us to talk about on stage at the Authenticate conference? You know, obviously needs to be probably somewhat appropriate to authentication, fight alliance pass keys, password less right things like that.
But we love to hear ideas. Obviously, you know, if you're if you're looking to attend, whether you're in person or if you're doing something remote because it's, I think it's gonna be live streamed as well. Always rather answer questions rather than just kind of try to figure out what people want. But it's going to be exciting. I think we're going to, we're going to have a cool live show. It's going to be streamed to, I don't know, millions, billions of people and yeah.
To 9 billion people, right? Yeah. And all that. Real people and all the fake people. Yeah, well, I think it's The Last of Us we put out, we were like, oh, there's no way, no second last episode was like. There was no way we could talk for 90 minutes, right? That's how we started off the show. And then what did we do? We recorded for 90 minutes, by far the longest episode we've done, I think by like a good 10 minutes. So I'm sure we can fill time if needed, but we'll give about an
hour's worth of a presentation. On the last thing that I'm really excited about, so if you use our discount code, you automatically get entered into a raffle and the the kind folks who are putting on the conference are going to put together some kind of goodie bag. And it's going to be the prize for the person who selected that. Now it could be a bag full of trinkets, Halloween candy. I have no idea.
But it's going to be something. So you know, make sure you use that code, You get 15% off and and maybe get a prize. Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. I don't know. I'm not sure yet how that's going to work. Don't have a lot of details, but use the code, support the Show ID AC15 podcast. I'll have it in our show notes too, so people can use it there. But yeah, there'll be something. For a Lucky ID AC15 podcast code user of some sort.
So we got that. I'm going to be at Identity Week America. A couple weeks before that in DC, I'm hosting a panel there talking about passkeys and things like that. So if you're going to be out there and we're working on a discount code for that one as well. So good news is we have discount codes and they're and they're for two conferences.
Couldn't be further apart from each other in the US, the ones in DC on the East Coast, the other ones in California and the West Coast. The the the dates and times don't overlap. So there won't be any conflict or anything like that. But we'll have that in the future show. So keep an eye out for that okay enough promotion. Why don't we get to our topic
today? Because I think this is a conversation with an individual that's probably a long time coming and I feel like I want to say that this is his second appearance on the show. And the only way that you would know that is if you listen to one of the identifier shows where I won't say it was harassment or physical, you know, accostment of one of our accosting one of our our guests as we were recording in the hallway there. But this is someone we're excited to have on the show.
His name is David Lee. He's an author, a speaker, a finance guy. He is an aspiring mogul and most importantly for us, he is the identity Jedi. So welcome to the show, David. Thanks. That's a great introduction. And no, it was not Assault. It was a nice, it's a nice shoulder massage. I was trying to make sure Ian was nice and prepped for his interview. Yeah, well, Ian's good people and we took him in stride, but. Yeah, great to have you on here.
I think for for people who don't know who you are and you've, you've put out a lot of content. You've got, you know, YouTube channel and you've got a whole bunch of stuff you work on. But hey, this is, I guess we'll call it officially the first time. We've actually got to sit and talk with you. We want to find out identity origin stories, you know, how did you get into the world of identity? Is it something that you chose or did it choose you? Yeah, so.
Great question because I, I love to ask those to people as well. So it shows me and how it started was I came out of college, wanted to be like it's the best software engineer ever. And so I started working for federal contracting for the government. And so my first contract, it was, you know, pretty cool. I was doing some J2 EE stuff. That's how old I am. And then I got onto another and it's another project and it was like, hey, like we're going to
build this. System where people are going to like you have to manage access and you have to create a way for people to request the access and it just it sounded like so super cool and indepth and I'm thinking oh man I'm going to get a chance to build like something really cool. So I come in there day one and I'm just I'm all ready to go
right. I'm I'm fresh stuff on you know Java and how we can do this and the latest things that we can do. We got like these swing applets and all the stuff that we can build like I am super geek and like the architecture's looking at me he's like huh. It's pretty cool. I came in, check this out, like, you know, because the first week back then it took forever to get your access. So I'm building prototypes, all this stuff or whatever. And he's like, that's great.
So he comes in and he takes like these two big books, the Sun, IDM training books, drops them on my desk and goes read through there. I'll teach you how to install it. That's the product we're working on. We got to get this up and deployed in the next 60 days. Oh, by the way, I'm going on vacation for two weeks. I expect you to have this figured out by the time I get back. Welcome to the project, kid. And walked out And I'm like,
huh? And that's literally how I came into Identity. I had no clue what it was. So I started installing some Identity manager, going through and figuring out the more I'm playing with this thing, I'm like, I don't need to code anything, like it's kind of all there. And so I'm digging into this language, figuring out what it is. And I'm the type of person that once I'm working with something, I need to understand everything about it to really understand
where it works. And the analogy I like to use is like, you know, if you give me a hammer, I want to go look at the tool set because I want to understand, like, what does this hammer relate to? Everything else that's send me okay. Well, This is why I use this instead of a screwdriver. And so that just put me down a
rabbit hole. I got really good at some idea understanding roles, provisioning, what Ldaps were, what access was, what access management, what certificate authorities were, and just yadda yadda yadda on and on and on. I've been doing it ever since, so it shows me, and I'm kind of glad I did. I kind of like the idea of. Make this trial by fire that you got right. This guy shows up. He's got books drops on your desk like I'm. I'm out of here. Peace. See him like sick.
You know in a couple weeks. You know welcome to the jungle plays in the background and you're like, all right, well, I guess I got to get to this right. I feel like this is like a movie scene that can like come together and now you've got this thing called the I am Jedi. Tell me about the identity Jedi. Like, what is this? Yeah, there's a newsletter. I'm signed up. I'm getting stuff from you like it seems like every day. Like, tell me about this. Yeah, so this all originated.
I did a talk at Identifiers, I don't know, maybe two or three years ago. Now I have to go look it up. But it's called how to How to Become an identity, right? News slash. I'm a huge Star Wars man. But at the time I was just thinking there was, we started to see this wave of people coming into identity, right. And what I would say like the second generation of.
Where there was a lot more information out there now like so back like when I started probably I would, I would assume when you guys started like you learn this by just doing it and whatever vendor product you had and then you learned other stuff like they just there wasn't any place to go. We didn't have forms. We didn't have anything.
It was just there you go. And so as I was talking to customers, I started noticing like a lot of them were just struggling understanding these concepts and basics and a lot of people that have been leading these organizations, you know knew nothing about identity. They were just giving A-Team go run this, you now have to do this and so. I wanted to create this presentation. We're just like, okay, This is, this is what it is. Here's how you can be successful.
There's busiest side, there's technical side. So I was like, okay, here's how you become an identity Jedi. And then I just kind of stuck with it. People loved that talk. They kept going. And then I was like, well, I'll just keep going with this moniker. And so from there, it turned into a newsletter, which is the identityjedi.com.
And so I send a newsletter out every week, usually on Wednesdays, which there's not going to be 1 today, setting a chance to write it. So it'll be coming tomorrow, but. But yeah, just kind of following following the the industry, right, the news and and what's going on and different takes that I have on things and explaining what these things are as is coming out because from from that time that I gave that talk to now, you know I feel like the the market has accelerated in the type of
things that we're doing. Identity is so much more front and center now and so again we're getting more and more people coming into it. But we still don't do a very good job of just kind of explaining what all this stuff is. It's kind of one of these things like you're already in the clubhouse, so you know. So when you get somebody brand new coming in, they're like, well, what's this and what's that? What's the final like, what's Samuel?
And, And we just talk about this stuff and throw it around like this is just what we know. And so I want to have a place where people could come if they knew identity that should learn if they're just, they love identity like like I do, like you guys do. Like here's actually things that I've found and I'd like to rent and write stuff and people like to read it. So I'm like, oh, here we go.
Somebody brought that up because we were talking before we hit record about barbers and when I go to the Barber. You know, take one first of all, it takes a while to find a good one, and then once you have them, you don't let them go. Right. Ever. Yeah. And it's like, OK, one of the first questions that, you know, typically asks is what do you do? Oh, I work in consulting. OK Well, what kind of consultant? Oh, security. Well, you mean like for doors?
No, for information security. I was like, oh, OK, well, what do you mean? It's like, OK, well, you know, like ID's and passwords and things like that. That's sort of the field that I'm in. Oh, OK. And then I feel like it's a courteous, oh, OK, like, I don't know what you just said, but sure, I'm just going to keep cutting your hair. How do you like, how do you tell people what you do? I don't man of mystery, I just. You just. Put your cloak over your head and then you just turn away and
you just wave your fingers. This is not the Jedi you're looking for. Honestly like, so if I'm talking to somebody like outside of the energy, I just tell I was like, yeah, I work in the cyber screening space and I just because it just doesn't. Depending on their level of interest, right. If they really want to get into it, then, you know, I'll explain it and get into it. But most of the time I just say I'm in the cybersecurity space.
Or if I get to deep into that, I was like, yeah, especially like getting access management. I was like, so, you know, like all the things that you do at work when you go and access your computer, these applications, stuff like that. I was like, yeah, well, behind the scenes there's a bunch of the needs that happen to make sure that you get that. I was like, I help people build systems that do that and people usually kind of get that and go okay cool.
So. And we were talking a little bit about identifiers earlier and the the not harassment that took place of Ian, but you gave one of the best, like keynote things that I've seen on the stage in a long time. And my understanding is it was your first time doing that and I thought you killed it. What was it like being up there and for people who weren't there? Can you just kind of just a real brief synopsis of what your talk was about and then take me behind the scenes like?
What was going? Through your head. Like, were you, like, ready? Were you, like, did you black out like Will Ferrell in old school answering the question, how did that go? Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for that, man. That means a lot. I appreciate it. I was telling Ian I was like, it's the athletes that I've gotten from people. It means the most of me, from my peers, right, People who are actually in this industry.
And that means a lot. It was my first keynote, but I mean, it wasn't my first time speaking. So I want to make sure these people are listening right. And I didn't just like, I'm going to come to speaker, let's go on the exact thing and go kill it. But it was my first keynote and you know, coming up to it, it was it was pretty nervous and I was more nervous than I than I usually in for speaking. The talk actually came together
10:00 o'clock the night before. Like not like I had the slides and everything done like that. All that's was submitted, but like. You know, I'm not a big person. I don't, I don't practice a lot. Like, I'm not one of these people who'll tell you, oh, practice and do all this stuff, whatever. That's not my style. I'm much more of a conversational style. I'm much more of a storyteller. So I had this story of what I wanted to tell and how I wanted to set it up.
It just wasn't flowing right. They didn't come together. Like I said, about 10:00, o'clock the night before. And I I had the 8:00 o'clock freaking teen outside the hungover slot. And I had the hangover slot because we're in Vegas at a conference, right? And of course, everybody's texting me, oh, come out, come out. And I'm like, Nope, I had to turn my phone off, fuck myself. And I was like, no. I was like, dude, mic check is like at 7. Like no, I'm not, I'm not going anywhere.
So I get up that morning, go to mic check. And yeah, like once I kind of submitted to the final like notes the night before, I felt better about it. I was kind of walking through it on my phone back in the green room and just kind of taking everything in. And then it's funny like a week before I was talking to Ian about like, when I do give talk it, I I do black out it, it doesn't. Like, I don't. I couldn't tell you what happened on stage.
I can tell you what I talked about because another talk. But I couldn't tell you like what happened on stage. Like as soon as I, as soon as Andy said it and like, they kind of raised up the lights and I walked out like that. That's it. That's all for mayor. It was just the next thing I remember is walking on stage and there's Ian giving me this huge big hug and telling me how much I killed it. And I was like, cool. I was like, I'm glad people liked it because I couldn't tell
you what that guy just. Said. It was a lot of fun. It was really good. So when you went behind stage, it's Vegas where they're like. I don't know, like drinks flowing. We had like Sammy, you know, Sammy Davis. We had a whole bunch of different impersonators there. Like, what was, what was it like behind the scenes? Yeah, so I'd love to say that it was like big huge party back there. It wasn't, It was pretty again,
early hangover slot like. So if I probably had like a later slot, you know, maybe the Rat Pack would have came by. But no, like backstage before me and the Green Room and my media team that I bought and then walking back off stage. It was literally was Ian in the next panel that was behind me. And then that was it, right? You know, just kind of walked off and took my headset and was like, yeah, great job and move.
We got to get to the next thing. So it was very much kind of like, you know, kind of moving on to the next thing. But it was very, I knew it was special from the reaction that I got from everybody afterwards, like the rest of the day, just kind of coming up to me telling me how much they enjoyed it. And it's your earlier question of what it was about. The main premise was just looking at the future of Identity and Web Three and the promise that.
Web three kind of brings to us and and the questions we have to kind of start asking and looking at what this means is we start to kind of develop this technology and that it's, you know, I believe it's a pivotal technology.
And the fact that it's one of those things that really forces us to to look back at things that question the decisions we've made maybe 20 years ago And is this still the case if we build this new identity, if it's truly decentralized and connected, like how do we rethink some of these use cases
that we've just known. This is how you do it for, for years now and some of the implications that it has right I touched on. You know what this means is we look at this technology, we're already starting to see some of it roll out a digital driver's license and then how it affects it. We've kind of created this technology term and access to it is kind of risen with it like we do. A lot of the technology that's talking about especially around these centralized identity is
built around, you know, like Apple iPhones and Samsung phones and these things, these things are expensive. These are $1000, you know phones, right. And and we count ourselves very privileged in the fact that yeah, we can afford these, but the average person can. And so if we're, if we're looking to build. A new kind of wave of this quickly identity and and make this stuff more accessible. We also have to think about what kind of barriers of entry are we creating there right.
Yes. It's it's not like I love my iPhone. I will never leave. I I can live through this thing. Right. I I love it. Right. And so but that's me, right. That's not like the average person. So we just need to we need to be aware of those things and make sure that you know this this is a chance for us to build a technology that truly is revolutionary and we just need to make sure that we're thinking about all of. It.
Yeah, I think it's, you know, just in what you're talking about with doing the keynote, I would have been nervous as hell. There's no way I could have gotten through that. But you did a fantastic job. You also did EIC this year, right? You got up and did a speech there. Not this year, but I've done EIC in in years before, but not this past year. What was that like? Was that pretty cool? That was. It was fantastic and and the reason. So for two reasons.
Number one, I mean I love talking about identity and at the time I was I was still at some point So me and Mike Kaiser who was the ivory to my Ebony, we used to always just be running to do an example. So we actually gave a talk together at EIC. But it was in Munich. It was a great time connected with people out there. I love the European identity community but it was special for me because I got to just take my mom. And that was the first time she had ever left the left the
country. So took her to Germany. We went, got a chance to see some of the sites. Did a train ride out to Prague, like all this kind of stuff. And then she, I don't think she would want to come to the conference. So then she comes to the conference and she's like walking around and like learning different stuff about identity that she would have talked to like Pam and like hanging out with the women in identity. And it was just hilarious like, and my mom's like olding up to
where like this. A lot of this stuff for her is just like this is. This is the sci-fi stuff, right, that they used to talk about. She's just saying, but she had a blast and it was great. And that she fell in love with European coffee to the point now where like I have to import like German coffee for her because, you know, apparently American coffee is horrible. I don't. I'm not a coffee drinker so I y'all taste like dirt to me, so oh. Man, that's that's rough.
I know Jeff's in the same camp I'm from the camp of. By the way, I love this is one of the things I wanted to talk about in the like my prediction for the future is that Coke 0 or any kind of 0 soft drink goes off the charts because I think Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi. Anything with aspartame in it? Just, I feel like it kind of already has, though. I mean, you couldn't get Coke 0 during the pandemic. I mean, everyone has had it like it was. Yeah, but like from a restaurant, you're right.
Like you go into a supermarket or grocery store, it's zero. But if you go into a restaurant, you order a Jack and Coke, they're like, well, are you say, do you have Coke? Zero. We have Diet Coke. It's like, that's not. Yeah, and then you put like the crossing. Get that away from me. Yeah. No, no, no. McDonald's has Coke Zero I discovered recently, so. Progress is being made in the soda industry, so thank you for that over. In humanity. In humanity. In humanity.
So. David, any more conferences for you this year? No, that's it. I am. I'm tapped out this year. I thought about going to Octane, but you know what? It's a lot different going to these conferences. When you gotta, you gotta pick the budget for it. So I'm like, I'm good. Yeah, especially when they're like downtown San Fran and the hotel rooms are like 400 a night. Yeah. For pretty basic so, but man, you've got so much going on. We saw that you wrote a book recently.
Want to know, you know, what's it called, what's it about, and then what made you write it? Because that's a lot of work. So the name of the book is the only one in the room. The unwritten rules of being black and tech and. What made me write it? I'll give you. I'll do the the short story of it because it is. It's a pretty long story. But I decided to write it right after I left Amazon. So I was at Amazon. I served 10 months at Amazon institution, I mean.
I was served. Thank you for your service. I was. I was let out for good behavior and coming out of there I, you know there was a lot of things that. I I kind of saw both at Amazon and just in general that I was like you know what this is there's a there's a kind of dark underside detective and I don't think we talk about enough. And yeah there have been we've been having debates and discussions about diversity equity, inclusion and things of that nature and that's been
okay. It's been progress I guess 0 to one is progress like to see more but it just kind of hate me coming after that that I was like hey this is. I think this is something that I that I really want to talk about. And I looked at like my experience and what my career had been like and the things
that I have learned. And, you know, for me is the journey that I've been on. You know, I grew up in Los Angeles, just outside of Los Angeles, and then I kind of went to school in the inland, imperative suburbs. But at the time that I grew up, you know, statistics, you know, for, you know, people of, of my age group, like as a black male, I was supposed to be dead or in jail by the age of 17. That was that was a statistic I was like 67% likely like this is
going to happen. Like it was very low statistics that anybody actually made it on did anything. And so that's something that just kind of stuck with me When I remember hearing that when I was younger and you know to kind of go from that to things that I've been able to accomplish. The stages I've spoken on countries I've been able to visit friends I've been able to do, the lifestyle I've been able
to live looks like there's. It's been pretty cool and and there's I want to see more people you know like that to come into this this field but there's a lot of things that kind of people just don't tell you about that I I said okay if I could do it all over again. I went back in time and I grabbed my 19 year old self like what would I tell him and what I tell him to look out for. And that's kind of what led me to started writing some of this stuff down and it was it was a
very interesting journey. I will say you know for me I I love to write. I love to write and read. Sorry Jim so. Writing the actual book wasn't wasn't the hard part. Like that actually kind of took maybe about three or four months. The whole process took me about three years. And a lot of that was just mental. Like, I'm gonna write a book like, what are people gonna think? Like, man, I'm not some super famous guy like this guy writing the book. And then like the title and the subject.
I'm like, man, people are gonna get all crazy. I'm like, but I'm the type of person I'm very like. I'm always in front about everything. Let's let's if there's a problem, let's go tackle it together. And I think part of the problem why this thing still exists and we deal with all these issues because we don't want to talk about it and we want to kind of, you know, tiptoe around it and like, yeah, we want to be cognizant of everybody's feelings.
But like, you've got to talk about things that put on the open, otherwise they'll never change. And so it was fighting a lot of that just kind of like, man, I don't know. And and and I I've got a lot. I've got all kinds of things multicultural all over the place. And so I knew that this book. Could kind of One could inspire a lot of people, which it has done, and I've loved the support of them from that.
But I also wanted to be very clear that I didn't want to write it in like to make anybody else feel bad or or or hurt anybody's feelings or pissing anybody off. But I had to get to the point where I was like, well, that's okay because I'm talking to a specific person. And so just in how I crafted the writing and the stories that I was telling to make sure the story was come across, that
really kind of took a while. A lot of the editing process and they're just kind of getting through, you know, imposter syndrome and like do I really want to do this? Finally just said, you know what? I've. Than everything else. Why not? We'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, it seems like you you've wrote something about
your lived experience. I think it's one of those things probably you're probably the most qualified person in the world when you're writing about your own lived experience, right? Yeah. Question for you who should read the book. Come on, I'm an author. Whatever, everybody should read. The book is for everyone. But OK, but specifically, right? The marketing term coming up right The avatar that I created this book for all my marketing out there will will love that.
The ICP if you will. But I I literally wrote this for as a love letter and all sense of the word to a young you know you know black professional looking to get into the technical space. Like somebody who's just now coming out of college and maybe get into college and saying hey, I kind of wanted them in tech but I don't know because I don't really see a lot of people that look like me which. That is a very real thing. And then that applies to
anybody. Like if anybody looks at something and you don't see anything that you can relate to, it makes it even harder for you to think that you can do that. And so specifically, that's who I aimed it at. Like, hey, like this is, this is what I've learned and this is what I've seen in news and things, right. So that specifically is what I wrote it for.
But in that case, a lot of the things that I talk about, the stories that I tell, like, I got a lot of feedback and people was like, yeah, this can apply to anything. I was like, yeah, I know. Right. It there's the secret to a lot of this stuff is hey, when you really look at it, we're all the same and we kind of want the
same things. It's like we just have to get outside of ourselves for just enough to realize that hey, when we get past everything else and we just connect on a human human basis, wow, Like a lot of the stuff applies to all of us. But there's a lot of things that just unspoken there. So short story is I would say young, black, professional looking at good new tactics. It's really it's for them. But outside of that anybody could take something from that and read it and. I wouldn't.
I would encourage like either managers or executives who are looking at it and say hey, we're struggling with diversity here to read it and understand like again this is 1 person's viewpoint, but it kind of gives you some kind of purview into like okay. Maybe This is why. Maybe some some of my black employees, maybe they feel this way okay. Maybe we can start working with our DII to start addressing some of these things and see if we can make this easier. So in that case, that's what I'm
saying. I would say anybody read it. If you've just been curious, someone understand. I think it's a great one, but. We're going to pick your brain. We have David Lee, Identity, Jedi, and heck, we all love Star Trek. So make sense. That's that's our subscriber should. I. Cancel subscription I mean. Don't disconnect them. I might hang out myself and I'm the host. I'm trying to be funny. All right. Anyway, so I TDR we knew. You're hot on that. Explain what is ITDR and what
excites you about it? All right. So Star Wars, first of all because that come on now we got to make sure we track that here come the track keys anyway. But I TDR, identity, threat detection and response, I am hugely high and excited about this. And and there's the main reason why is that when you break down what that means, right. So identity threat detection and
response okay. So it's this growing kind of market space of looking at. Threats that that apply to identities and how do we detect those threats and respond to it. And it's still kind of early on in its quote UN quote market phases. We've got a couple of different companies out there that are looking at this area optimized or we just get recently acquired that are all looking at this.
And the the concept behind it which gets me excited is that we we finally started taking a step in identity where if you have to if you take a step back and say when identity quote UN quote kind of first started, we looked at it and said it was a huge administration problem, right. The administrators were screaming, listen, I can't tell you how many accounts I create. I just don't create the accounts. I don't know where they are. I don't know who has access.
What are you talking about? I don't know. And so when we started this, we just said, okay, we just need to get a handle around this. Let's let's create and automate things around this administrative burden of understanding where all my identities are. What do they have access to? What are things that are driving that access? And how do we manage this process of making sure we understand how we're giving access to everybody and what that does.
That's been the last. But seniors, great, We've done that. Cool. But we also wanted to start saying, hey, I'm going to use part of security and that we've given talks. Like if we look at the kill chain, if Identity Access Management Control was involved, then a lot of the security preachers would have been stopped. We could have prevented them, but this whole time, identities just kind of been on the background. It's like, hey, we're just a submission of the thing.
We're we're not actively in the fight. We're just like, hey, well, we did everything we're supposed to do and set it up the right way. And after that we're out of it. I TDR kind of moves identity more towards that security operations standpoint. It's like Okay, great. Well, here are these threats that are coming in and So what
do we do with that? We can see that Okay out of your 100 users, 67 of them don't have MFA configured and we know how important MFA is. So what do we do about that Or we're detecting things that are like maybe misconfiguration in your a WS environments, Okay, these persons shouldn't have
this much access. What do we do without that And more specifically what I would like to see is this as this kind of continues to go is. What are we seeing around the threatening identity like just like security thinks about okay. I'm going to pretend like whatever I did nothing worked. How do I stop you from getting it? How do I prevent that zero day when you get into, when you break into an application from spreading, how do I protect
that? The same thing we have to do with identity Okay. So day one it starts. We we put everything in place but let's say something didn't work the right way. Some guy did get in and now they want to go and get access to you know the admin accounts are creating things. What do we do to make sure that doesn't happen? And that to me is a much more active conversation and involvement.
We've got all this great data in context within Identity Systems and we have all these controls that we can now start to automate and make sure they're a part of it. Because if you look at it just simply as simple as taking your IM system, right. So let's, I'll be very close. Let's look at your SSO system. So you've got everything set up for SSO, let's connect that to your IGA system and say okay, we know how we're going to provision things and what they
need to be and. We had a separation of duties and policies. Great. And that matches my SSO. Now tie that with your IGM system and then sorry your Pam system for when somebody wants to go get access to a privilege access account. All three of those are talking and connected. Then at any given time if anything gets out of whack, the three of those are kind of working in in conjunction to
make sure that doesn't happen. That's really just if you look at the core, but that's ITDR right okay like here's how we're going to apply these things to make sure responded to the threat so. That to me, and I've always wanted identity to have a much more active say in security conversations. And so that's what excites me about it. It's the type of conversations and what you're bringing to identity teams.
And as they're now talking to security teams and saying, hey, we're sending you not only telemetry data, but there's things that we're seeing that we can start doing. How can we work with you as you guys are tracking down incidents and you're stopping things from coming in. Let's make sure we're sharing with you how that's connected to
any identity, right? So if somebody gets breaching, gets to the server, hey, we can tell you, here's everybody that has access to the server, how they have access to these groups and here's how the provisions ain't no problem, we can do responses on our side to make sure that, hey, even though we didn't stop them getting known and they got to the database server, like we can really quickly mitigate like how far
they can get. So I feel like and tell me if this is fair, but I've said this before in previous episodes that I feel like I TDR is sort of UBA. UEBA, the user behavior analysis, User and entity behavior analysis of like a decade ago and is that one, is that fair And two why do you think that is? Is it because we have more maturity when it comes to identity within enterprises where thou that data is actually available and now we can actually do stuff? With it. So I would say it's the.
The only thing that would different with you sort of say, I would say it's the concept of what we wanted to do with UEVA from a decade ago, right. The whole reason why we wanted to understand activity of the user so we could know and have a better understanding of okay, here's this access. But like what are you really doing with it, right? Because with Identity so far, we knew how to model the access and say here you go, okay, great, you're going to have these
things. What does that mean? What do you do with it? Like how how much do you access this? And when you log into it, how long are you logging in? And so that was what we're trying to do with UVA and I. The, the second part of the answer is like why, why now and why didn't it work then? I don't think it's the data that we have now is the same amount of data we had back then. I think connectivity is a little
better, right. More standards is coming in and so we can connect, it's easier to connect to these different applications and kind of send data across. I think that has improved. But I also think honestly think it's a mindset from a maturity standpoint, a customer has gotten a little bit more advanced and smarter and understanding without it's right for identity for the longest
time. We were dragging the customer to understand what the value was and kind of getting them there and all they wanted to do was pass their audits and make sure people could single song like I'm done, right. They just they didn't really want to dig in and see the value of all the other things. I think we we passed that mark. We're only dragging the customer. The customer gets it, the got it.
And we understand yes my audits, but like also there's other things that I can be doing here Okay and now that they're ready to kind of have those conversations and customers are leading those conversations. Now I think that's why it's, it's starting to hit it home a little bit more, right, because we can kind of use this and say like we can actually start putting this into action and doing some things.
And so yeah, I I think it's going to be interesting to see how those, some of those, you know UEBA kind of vendors from the past like I'm really surprised they haven't jumped all over this, right, because they they kind of already have set up the interesting things to do. So we'll it'll be interesting to see if we start to hear them talk about this in the next, you know coming months.
You know, I can't. I've said this before on past episodes, and I think this is the next major thing in identity, because we always thought of identity as who has access to what. But I think it's then and what are they doing with it? And you see this in the Kim space, right, where it's like we're trying to remove any unnecessary privileges, so we get to at least privilege. So give an account these roles. Have they used those roles? If not? Remove those roles.
I think it's, if you can apply that to your entire identity infrastructure that takes a ton of data and a ton of ability to process data. I don't think we're there yet. But to me, like that was the promise of the UBA. I just think that it was based on a reality that isn't reality, right. We don't have all those logs available. We can't process big data in
that way with the tools we have. So let's pivot, because I want to talk about what's happening in this, this old piece of technology called Azure Active Directory. We've got this new thing called Microsoft Entra. I mean, for, you know, for veterans of the industry who have been around since Azure Active Directory was around, we've now got this thing called Microsoft Entra. What is Microsoft doing with Entra?
So what I hope they're doing is. Finally figuring out that, hey, we're Microsoft and we've got every single connection point to kind of create this nice comprehensive solution for truly managing access within the environment, like from something else, like we can kind of do it all. I think they're trying to lean into that. The reason I'm hesitant is because it's this isn't the first time that they've done that.
Like, this is like the fifth or sixth time we've seen them kind of, like get something rebranded, hey, and we're like, oh wait, Microsoft's finally getting it. And then we're like, no, right, No. Someone is like a template. Right. Find and replace old name, put new name. There's like no new functionality. So for people who aren't aware, like Microsoft just recently announced as of time recording that now there's this thing called Microsoft Entra and the idea is that it's basically just
a name change. For Azure Active Directory, which OK, fine, you know, whatever. I can understand the confusion. When you say AD, the next question is, well, what do you mean is it you're on Prime AD or Azure AD, OK, that'll help, but AD is AD and now you've got Microsoft Entra. So is that me? And now I think of is that Windows me the not well. Received. Windows that was out there. So yeah, I mean, right now it seems to me as I kind of, you know, I don't have any inside information, but.
I read articles just like everyone else does and it just seems like a name change and that's it. So it's a name change, but also it is unfolding the work that they've been doing with their verifiable credential work that they've been doing, a lot of things they've been doing around like their activity protection services that has always kind of been there, but they're trying to highlight that a little bit more. So and that's why I'm hesitating
cuz, yeah. They, they made this big press release and it's like, oh, it's now this and it's a name chain. It's like, all right, but you didn't. And now we're including all these things like. So the stuff that you already had that's kind of been there, you're not including. It's all intra great what I'm waiting to see next and it could be out there. So if this is out there, who are Microsoft lovers out there?
And it's like there's this blog right now, we'll talk about, I'm sorry, I haven't already yet, but there could be data out there. What I wanted to see from there was like okay, This is what we see within the Microsoft Intra, you know, network, whatever they're going to call it. Like, here's how you connect all these dots and make this happen. But they've had it for such a long time, right? So I'm cautiously optimistic that maybe we'll see some of
that coming out. I do know that it's done enough, right, that I've talked to a couple of friends of mine who are also consultants and kind of talking to customers where it's causing customers to do a pause and say, hey, well, let's maybe in this side box, let's see what Microsoft has to do there. Because I mean. They've always had the most compelling use case to make it to anybody, right? It's like okay. Well, why go buy anything when I can? I got outlook, I use the, I got
a DI got all this stuff. I'm just going to stay right here. And if you tell me that I can package all that into an E5 or E6 or whatever license, I mean procurement just got easier like manual just got easier like everything just right there. And I know a couple of organizations that are that are just there die, they're going to do that. But it's just Microsoft was never delivered on the rest of the features, right. They just they've never really either.
I don't wanna say they didn't care about identity, but it didn't seem like it. They just they don't seem to dig to dive deep into identity. They just say hey e-mail will do protection will do. This will be great cool like. They. Tried governance for 10 years and just can't get right. They have good solutions and it's like most things, right? Once you follow the sweet spot of Microsoft, typically that's where the cracks start to show through and it's a very captive audience.
It's the same question that I always get as well. Why would you buy something else if you're looking at authentication and you're already a 365 customer? You're already paying for it. Probably quick side note, because I know we're going to talk about AI a little bit later, but I don't know if you saw recently the pricing that they've announced for Microsoft Copilot. They want to basically double the price of licensing. It's another $30 per user per month to use all the AI features
they've been developing. So this is quickly going to become a very expensive space and I'm sure you know they'll make money off it just like anything else. But yeah, it is not cheap to operate in the cloud. Interesting. Yeah. I was just wondering like if Microsoft can deliver on the governance. I I agree with everything David said, everything you said, Jeff, if they do deliver, do they run the table? I think the answer is probably no, they don't probably run the table.
But I think would be great though is if the features that make up governance now become available to the lower middle market small businesses that basically can't afford identity governance at this point. And I wonder if it's like air conditioning, right? Used to be a luxury item and then it got cheaper and cheaper and came down like, you know, I, my first car had roll windows, You know, now when you say I'm going to roll my window down and was like, you're really just
pushing a button. But hey, we're old school. We know what we're talking about, right? So maybe at some point, yeah, there is that kind of trickle down. Let's move on because I want to talk about Thanos, I mean, to my Bravo and all of the identity companies that they are collecting into their Infinity Gauntlet. What? What do you think? Like what's going on with Tomo Bravo? Is it truly an Infinity Gauntlet situation or do you see it more of a Pokémon situation where
they have a bunch? Of you guys talking about, I don't even know what these things are. Nerds talking, Jim, just just go back on you what? Podcast Am I on? What do you think, David? So I'm going with my I'm going with my, my, my initial gut instinct, which I think it's much more. Of a Danos Infinity Gauntlet thing. Although I've I've made the case that it could be just a Pokémon
of a I just want to catch. I just wanted I'm just going to grab up all of these and get as as much get them as efficient and as profitable as possible and I'll see which one wins, right? And guess what? Like I've got all of them and the time they bought them I bought them at a discount. So either way I kind of win. But I really think though and and the reason why I think it's more than the Infinity Gauntlet is because.
Of an interview that they put out on a podcast was it was I'm going to it was one of the main partners and I I don't remember saying well I must say wrong and he talked about their whole process with sell Point and why they came back and bought sell point again and how much they learned about the identity security market from working with sell Point. Sell Point was their first venture into that market. It was super successful. Then they took him out IPO.
And so they wanted, they saw like growth again, they want to come back in. And so listen, investors don't make money by not being greedy like you know what I mean? So it's like they're looking at this and going, OK, well, how we did it, oh boy, man, rest of these are kind of on sale right now. Let's go gobble them up and do something again. And and now they're much more attuned to where the market is going.
So the shortage of the way I think they're doing is I do think they're going to look at this and and have this different technology and pay attention to over the next five years where's this market going to go. And I've got enough IP that A, if I need to put together my quote, UN quote Infinity dollar and create an identity security platform, I've got all the pieces to do it right. It'll be ugly like.
And I mean ugly from like how they're going to have to do it like okay, we're going to chop this and have chop this and have you go over here like it's not going to be pretty what what comes out of that thing from what they're going to have to cut to go do it. But they have the assets, they actually go do it. And so I just think that when we look at these PE firms, right, you're talking. At minimum, 7 to 10X is what they're looking for.
Like that's the only return that I can see for them doing that. I don't see them taking these companies and holding them and go, we're just going to turn in the cash cows or just hold them okay. But that's not what you do like you look for big returns, right. So I do think at some point we're going to start seeing everybody to the opinion sell point that kind of makes the most sense because their
customer bases are similar. But I think what they're waiting to see is how this next kind of technology term of what happens over the next two years and where they need to augment that with, right. I don't know, I haven't. I stopped following for a while. I know there's some things with Ford Rock that I haven't quite closed yet, but at some point that'll close what they're missing from there.
And and and this is what I would say you, you definitely know they're going towards Infinity outlet, look at their next purchase, right, if they purchase something either in. Let's say cuz they get orchestration with with Ping and Da Vinci and they get some Ford like if they look at something more towards the security space, something like a a Kim management or even like they go by one of these like smaller
IGDR companies. If you see a purchase of their that, that's typically and that's exactly where they're going, right? Like so it's their next kind of one or two purchases for me that are going to like really tip the head of where they're going. Because they've made this person, they've kind of done silent, which I mean, look, they just spent what, what was it like, $14 billion? I'm like, all right, look, there's a lot of money. You bought a lot of things. Go play with your toys.
But there is they're building something. I just, it just doesn't. I can't see them. Not like what? Why do you get into P/E? How do you get it to nuts off all of it if you don't comply with something and say, I can take this and then put it out and tell it is that much more? That's the only possible path I see. Interesting conversation. I I didn't know what an Infinity Gauntlet was or Athano's, but I kind of figured out what you guys are talking about.
It's like. We'll get off your don't worry about it. That's right. They're going to get, they're going to get their money because that my analogy was they bought 3 super cars and they could kind of like take the best of each car and like build one really super, super car or. They could just keep the three cars, wait a little while and sell them for more money than they paid. Either way, they probably win.
So I don't think nobody's going to get on on a podcast and say, like, hey, I'm from home row and this is what we're doing. So we're all just sitting here like, you know, thinking about like, okay, what might we do if we were playing with billions of dollars of identity companies? I'd probably challenge another billionaire to a wrestling match or page matches. That's just me. Hey, that's just me.
I don't know, you know? So, so David, do you have a winner in that in that UFC fight between Zuck and Elon? Look, man, I I do. And it and it and it changed just recently. And I'm gonna tell you what changed. What did you saw that picture? Yeah buddy, cuz like Israel, I can never pronounce his last name like. That dude's no joke, right? Like, so if you were, and it could have just been a promotion picture. But like, dude, I'm looking at
like, dude shredding. Like, if you did any kind of training at all with these guys, like, just kept up with them for a practice round. I'm like, dude, that's. And Elon, I'm with you, man. His workout routine is reaching for the next, so I. I think that exactly right. You see, like the stats of Elon's taller, he's kind of got a little bit of attitude, but Zack just looks like a fighter. I I didn't think that. Like when you see him with his clothes on, he just looks like Joe Average.
But man, that guy's ready to fight. Next question. So you know, thinking of the IGA space seems pretty clear. Yeah, sailplane and savient, they're wanting to. Who in your mind is #3? And obviously we had the whole Microsoft conversation, so don't we sure answer by using them. But who do you think might shake it up? So I I don't think there's a
clear number three. I think once, once after you leave those two, it comes down to like you know, customer size, profits and things like that and there's a number of them that you can look at. What I will say is like who I think has the potential to really shake it up to be honest is is Octa and I don't know if they will or not.
But they but they have a chance. Their IGA product has been, it's been interesting and also like almost two years ago now and I still haven't really seen much from it. But their ability of what they're going to be able to do from a perspective of not only from with their IGA, their access certifications. They'll they'll automatically have like activity and usage data.
Like they'll be able to give you a much deeper understanding of not only what Access is, but how it's being used and kind of more closer real time. And I think it's going to be a game changer for a lot of people. I I like some kind of up and comers. Visa is a company that assembled across a couple of weeks ago.
I kind of really like what they're doing and how they're going after it. Zilla security what's the I can I can see the other company actually it's going to kill me because we talk about it all the time. There's another one you would test there we go and you would test is another one like there's these nice little kind of small. Smaller companies that are that are a lot more focused and they're focusing on making sure that from an IGA perspective kind of have me focus on access search.
So I'm like okay, there's more to it than that. But that's that's the hairiest part. With an IGA product like if you ever implemented it like those are things that just take forever. They're fact, they're really focused on automating that and making that easier. So I think you've got a handful of players there once you pass like save it that you can tend to choose from, you kind of pull together.
But I if I had to put my money on something, I was like I just got the biggest chance to really kind of shake up that market because they can quickly give you kind of like what you know a Gardner kind of calls a converged I AM right. They've got enough pieces to quickly put that together and get you a good offering for that. And they don't like, it's like they don't have to do much to get it there right, like their IGA product doesn't have to be stellar, it just has to be functional.
And they've got everything else they're going to make it happen. So it's so it's surprising me to see that that just hasn't taken off. So I'm, I'm watching that one. We're kind of made it graph to see how they come out. That's what's, yeah, that's a really cool answer and it's
interesting. I was bouncing back to the Cooper Coal IGA, what they call it, the market Compass from last year and they didn't even list doctor, which I thought, you know, if there was a gap in their list, that's it because. I agree with you. They've been at the the IGA project for a while and they could really shake up the game.
So yeah, I'd like that answer. Last thing, which of these technologies are you the hottest on Kim, which we talked about is like Pam 2.0 around here, Identity verification or decentralized identity? Decentralized identity by far like I think it's it's got the potential to completely reshape. How we look at identity and then how we look at identity, how we use it from a daytoday basis, from workforce like all the way down to like everyday person like it's just got a huge range
of impact that it can have. And so to me it's it's the one thing that I, I follow and check up on the most because it's it's, it's interesting to me it's it's really that cool kind of scifi thing that you know I won't say everybody but like me when I would look at some knowledge and stuff like that when we see these. You know look at Minority
Report, right. The people used to trip out about that and the things you can do and like these kind of advertising that you would see that would target people and things of that nature and we kind of saw them American. But like I used to always think about Minority Minority Report like how how far it seemed from a technical logical advancement.
I look at these centralized, I did it in some of the use cases we were talking about like and the fact that we basically walk around with supercomputers in our pocket now like it's. It really it has the chance to make like the biggest impact, right? All the way down to like how we, how we purchase food, how we, you know, get transit. Like you can do all of this stuff in carrier identity with you and really protect it like that. I don't know that that's game changing, right?
And if we can get it down to where it's, we could get it to a device that anybody can get access to and carry, right? Now what does that look like, right? Like, what are those interactions look like? So it's it's both interesting and scary at the same time, right? Like I do see a world where that kind of gets away from us, but by far to me, that's that's the
most one that I'm interested. In whenever I think about the decentralized identity, my mind goes to the mobile driver's licenses and I think to myself if 10 years from now we're still carrying around plastic cards. Or paper passports or whatever like that. It's going to be really disappointing. I'm not saying that in 10 years will be fully realized where every credential is completely electronic 20 years from now. I think so.
But you know I it is kind of hard to see the vision of going from where we are today to that 10 year vision. But I feel like it's got, it's just got to happen. I'm with you. I think it does too. It's how do we do it responsibly? Right. Like we I'm going to be, I'm going to be very careful because like this topic gets into so many different things, right. Like I'll just say this, the US doesn't have a great history when it comes to the tracking of
individuals, right? Like you start going down that history path, they're like, oh this is that's not good and and so that's the question. It's like yes, we want to be able to have that from the convenience but to really do that that means. We've got to get a device that we can, something that we can now get to anybody and everybody that can have some kind of credential on it, right?
And we've got to do that responsibly so everybody can have it and then give them the ability to share what data they want. But as we've seen, it's the question what happens on the other side of that, How much then is other people able to track and use that data? And that's where we got to be really careful because we've already seen with, you know, the whole Facebook, Cambridge scandal and everything we've seen over the last, you know,
decade. When there's a regulation around data, like, we will just do stupid things with it because we can, right? And so that's the biggest thing about it. I think that's going to, that's going to, that's going to add to the length of time of what it takes to get there is how do we do this responsibly? We we want people to have it. And yes, it it makes it not only convenient, but it's more efficient and it's sometimes like safer, right? And that's awesome.
But how do we make sure we do that responsibly? How do we think about the things? Just lessons that we've already learned, right? I always go back to the Jurassic Park, you know, right? Like we all suffer the same thing. We're quick to see whether we can something, but we never started to think. Should we do this right and that? Is an awesome comment and I think, you know, we could sit here and debate because that that's a rabbit hole. That is a rabbit hole.
Well, let's go ahead and and wrap up with a I because it wouldn't be an episode without some a I at the center talk. Where do you see a I taking? You know the identity space. I think it I think it helps transforming to its next kind of
state. I had this conversations at RSAI think with so I I got to back up with this concept when I first saw what everything what chat GP Jack's chat GPD was doing and I saw these LOAS and generative a I I didn't get excited about oh chat GP can write A blog for me say no no what this tells me is that. The underlying components of it, right? To be able to build the data sets, to train models, have gotten to a point where you can actually develop applications on top of it quickly.
I was like, that means we've made a huge progression there. That's awesome, because now that means I can take these things and start to put them into other things and use them in different ways, which we've seen since then. Like everything literally has a I in it now. Freaking Google Dash. Just roll something out right, Like so. Having said that.
Where I see AI coming in is that we can, we can start to look at that and imply that there's a lot of things that we do in identity that are just inefficient because they're administrative heavy, that can easily be automated, that you can give to a training model and say, oh, this is how this works, I know how to do this, no problem, take it there.
So what I see is things like access reviews I see actually use being the thing of the past, I think between activity data using a. An, A, I model to understand access patterns and relationships that you could certify in real time, like what Access somebody has, turn around with like a digital signature to sign it. And you can even pass out to otters and go like, yeah, I don't need to run an Access view.
I can literally tell you here is what the Access that people have today, here's what they're approved to have, and here's how we're making sure they always kind of have that. And so I think there's going to be certain things like that that just get completely wiped out, like you no longer need to do them. So that's what I look at for AI as we start to look at this and learn and understand more about the data and what we can do with these data and build these
models. I see things like that just kind of completely transforming those features and making them something that is not. It's an afterthought, It's like it's just kind of something we do. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, it's exciting to see the advances. I'm bullish on it, but we've got to make sure that we do it right and. We've talked about, like the statement. I remember who it was. But it's like, you know, now
with 50% more a I, right. This identity tool, it's like, OK, well, well, you know, great, cool. You know, my definition of it changed when we saw things like ChatGPT come out, was like, wow. And now I use it a lot. I mean, it's a great starting point, but it also lies a lot. You know, it hallucinates whatever, you know, whatever term you want to use for providing, you know, not factual data, right. Those are the things that I think we need to keep an eye out for.
But it'll get better. That's the that's the bright side, right? This is the worst that it will ever be, and it's pretty darn good. But, and here's the also thing about it, right? This is, to me, this is the this is brought to life. In saying that, we always say garbage in, garbage out. You're literally seeing it, right?
So people complain about, oh does this or whatever it was like, it's trained on this like it's only going to come up with the data that you give it. So if you want to complain, oh, it's biased because data is biased. Oh, it's this because it's the data you gave it. Like, it's not going to magically make things better. It's just when you look at machine learning in general, it's like it can consume mass amounts of data faster than the human brain. That's the whole purpose.
Great. All right, cool. Do all this for me and then show me the patterns, right. If you don't like the patterns that it shows you, it's because you got to go look at the data that you're giving it. So to your point about that, it will get better because as we start to, we want to use and do more, we're going to have to learn okay. How do we?
We need to make sure that we're getting the data that we want and we're getting more about asking our questions about the data, doing better, about making sure that our our systems are actually creating the data that we want, right? Another rabbit that we can get into. But I'll just say with this, like something as specific as like looking at your identity system, like what are the audit records that you're writing? Most of the sounds are very customizable and nobody touches them, right?
So like, you could literally say okay. Well, if I can customize my audit records and say here's the things I want to audit every single time. Now I'm giving it much more data that guess what? Then I can start building patterns off of and doing models. So it's things like that. As we start to learn and understand it, that then it will start to get better. We just have to, you know, dig
it and do what? All right, well, we've got David Lee, the identity in Jedi, so we're gonna end on a lightsaber note. So what I wanna understand from you, David, is what color is your identity, Jedi lightsaber. OK, so. And I hope it's not the same as mine. We'll find out. Mine is white and I got to get the story of why it's right. This is for all the Star Wars in there. So Jim, you're not going to like this. I'm sorry. Before it, it was purple, right?
Because I loved Ms. Swindoo. He was like one of my favorite characters. I was like, yes, that is that is the color that I will go for it. And then I finally got into Rebels and like I watched all of that in. When I saw kind of a soca's timeline, I agreed so much with the soca that I was like, Nope, that is kind of where I would go. White lightsaber all the way. All right, So white is kind of traditionally seen as like purity, peace, positivity, neutrality, kind of that Gray
Jedi potential, right? I think more on the side of. You know, not seeking conflict. You're right. That kind of thing. So I'm surprised that you said white, because I thought for sure you gonna be seeing me, because mine is definitely purple. I I am a Gray Jedi, like through and through. I will pull from the light side, the dark side. It doesn't matter. I'm going at it. Whatever I need to do to get the job done.
Not seeking it out. So I'm not, you know, that that side of it. But definitely, yeah, Mace Windu. And then, of course, you know Samuel Jackson. I mean, come on, man. That's the way to go. Jim, what's your color of lightsaber? What color was Yoda? Yoda was green, I think. Yeah, is that. Yeah, it's a it's a growth safety harmony. I've got a little with CHEAT SHEET, I mean.
I like Yoda. So here's the question I had because I saw someone wearing a tshirt and there's that, I don't know animal or person that looks like a baby Yoda. Yeah. Is that baby Yoda? It's. Groku. Yeah. Is that the same person? It's the same what race or creatures or whatever species. That's what I was looking for, yeah, yeah. Is that a Jedi we? Don't know yet, yeah. They're definitely force sensitive. The midichlorians are going crazy on that kid I.
Don't know. Jim doesn't even know what questions to ask. He's like. Well, just pick a color. Like what was the card again? He just makes it so that's all he does. I'm going to go. I got to go Yoda. I go green. All right. Growth. Safety, Harmony. All right, all right. This has been a fun
conversation. David, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to have a whole bunch of links in our show notes, you know, for you, for people to connect with you on LinkedIn, we'll have a link to your book, which just came out a month ago, which is very exciting. Good times. The only one in the room, the unwritten rules of being black and tech. So definitely check that out. And of course, the Identity Jedi website. Sign up for the newsletter. It's cool. I dig it. I like the style.
It's totally up my speed. So well done. Congratulations. Hopefully you'll come back and join us. Hopefully we will have you come live on a show when we're next time we're at a conference together or something like that, and maybe Ian will assault you while you're on the microphone. Next time, just to make it even. Make it fair. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, that's that's, you know, fair balance to the force, right? All that kind of good stuff. All right, enough Star Star Wars stuff.
We're going to leave it there for this week. Don't forget to check out our discount code for Authenticate ID AC15 podcast. Get you 15% off. Hopefully we'll see a lot of people at Authenticate Friendly Faces hopefully see a lot of people friendly faces at Identity Week America also coming up And yeah, we're on the web, identitythecenter.com. On Twitter IDAC Podcast Mastodon IDAC podcast at infosec dot exchange. Still hate the names and the way that works, but whatever.
Connect with us on LinkedIn. Looking for ideas, for show notes, for I mean for for for future shows. Questions, right? Things like that. And connect with David. What I saw today was that David and I have like 180. Contacts in common. So yeah, you had. Me beat by almost. No, I think I have like 111 or something like that.
So we know a lot of the same people or we accept every invite that comes our way and we don't really filter out whatever it is. One of the two, Yeah, we'll go in there like subscribe, share with a friend, share with an enemy, don't care as long as they're listening. This all matters to us. So thanks, David, so much for your time, Jim. Thanks for your time. And we'll talk with everyone in the next one. You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the website at identity@thecenter.com and find us on Twitter at IDAC Podcast. See you next time on Identity at the Center.