Jeff and Jim are joined by Warwick Ashford, senior analyst at KuppingerCole and returning MC of the European Identity and Cloud Conference, for a full preview of EIC 2026. The conference runs May 19-22 at the Berlin Congress Center and is expecting around 1,500 attendees with roughly 250 speakers across 200 sessions. Warwick walks through the 2026 tagline, Digital Trust Through Intelligent Identity, and unpacks the five parallel content streams covering identity governance, real-world IAM use cases, emerging tech, enterprise infrastructure, and privacy and compliance. The conversation covers how AI and agentic identity have moved from theory to a central agenda theme, what to know about the quantum-safe identity block, why EU digital wallets and digital sovereignty are getting serious keynote time, and why EIC records everything so you never have to pick the wrong session. Jeff also shares his take on where EIC fits in the broader conference calendar alongside Identiverse and Gartner, and why he is thoroughly done hearing that identity is the new perimeter.Connect with Warwick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warwickashford/Attend European Identity and Cloud Conference 2026 (use code idac25mko for a 25% discount): https://www.kuppingercole.com/events/eic2026?ref=partneridac26Secure Remote Access: The Foundation of Industrial Cybersecurity (KC Analyst Chat Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpNg-ogEv4Connect 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.com00:00:00 Intro and AI Cybersecurity Discussion00:04:00 EIC 2026 and Discount Code00:05:47 Introducing Warwick Ashford00:07:00 Warwick's Recent Work: MDR, SRA for OT/ICS, and TPAG00:10:16 The History and Evolution of the EIC Name00:11:00 Tagline: Digital Trust Through Intelligent Identity00:12:10 How AI Has Elevated the EIC Agenda00:14:49 Sessions vs Workshops at EIC00:17:57 EIC as a Community and Networking Conference00:18:00 Jeff's Conference Circuit: EIC, Identiverse, and Gartner00:25:28 EIC 2026 Keynote Highlights00:31:55 Virtual Attendance and Session Recordings00:34:34 Hidden Gem: The Quantum-Safe Identity Block00:36:15 Logistics: 1500 Attendees and 250 Speakers00:38:00 The Five Parallel Content Streams00:43:31 Is Identity the New Perimeter?00:48:13 Fun Segment: Most Memorable Theater MomentsKeywords: EIC 2026, European Identity Conference, Warwick Ashford, KuppingerCole, digital trust, intelligent identity, agentic identity, non-human identities, ITDR, quantum-safe identity, EU digital wallets, identity fabric, identity control plane, IAM, zero trust, Berlin, conference preview, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Warwick Ashford

This episode features a virtual roundtable hosted by Michele Crockett, Associate VP of Product Marketing at Semperis.The panel brings together five practitioners with deep experience in identity security: Alex Weinert, Chief Product Officer at Semperis; Christopher Brumm, Cyber Security Architect at glueckkanja; Eric Woodruff, Chief Identity Architect at Semperis; Jorge de Almeida Pinto, Senior Incident Response Lead at Semperis; and Michael Van Horenbeeck, CEO and Senior Solution Architect at The Collective Consulting. Collectively, they represent experience across incident response, Microsoft product development, enterprise architecture, and security leadership.In this discussion, the panel addresses how to allocate limited security budgets across prevention and recovery, why the same AD misconfigurations keep appearing in assessments year after year, and what AI means for defenders and attackers alike.This episode is a practical, field-tested conversation about what moves the needle when resources are constrained.Guest Quote "80% of permissions that are out there are users that have access to systems they don't need. Going back to that Tier 0 system, a hundred percent of what's got access to Tier 0, you should know what it is, why it has access, why it needs it, [and] what's going on...  Any apps that you can't prove what they're there for, turn them off. See who yells."Time stamps 0:00 Meet the Panelists 00:00 AI in Cybersecurity 02:23 Budgeting for Identity Security 05:08 Field Lessons and AD Misconfigs 08:48 Prioritizing Prevention and Funding 12:59 Current Attacker Trends 14:56 Hybrid and Multi Cloud Risks 17:02 Entra Private Access POC 18:28 Lightning RoundSponsor The HIP Podcast is brought to you by Semperis, the leader in identity-driven cyber resilience for the hybrid enterprise. Trusted by the world’s leading businesses, Semperis protects critical Active Directory and Entra ID environments from cyberattacks, ensuring rapid recovery and business continuity when every second counts. Visit semperis.com to learn more.LinksConnect with Alex on LinkedInConnect with Chris on LinkedInConnect with Eric on LinkedInConnect with Michael on LinkedInConnect with Jorge on LinkedInConnect with Michele on LinkedInConnect with Sean on LinkedInDon't miss future episodesLearn more about Semperis

Jeff and Jim welcome back five-time guest Jeff Reich, Executive Director of the Identity Defined Security Alliance, just ahead of Identity Management Day 2026 on April 14th. Jeff walks through the structure of the 21-hour global event, this year's theme of Finding Identity: The Search for You, Me, and the Machines, and highlights from each regional program including a remarkable 11th grader presenting on cybersecurity and neuroscience. The conversation expands into AI guardrails, the growing obsolescence of traditional PAM, zero standing privilege as a long-term goal, the march toward a passwordless world through passkeys, and what quantum resilience actually means for practitioners today.Connect with Jeff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jreich/Learn more about the Identity Defined Security Alliance: https://www.idsalliance.org/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.comTimestamps:00:00 Welcome and podcast life behind the scenes02:00 Identiverse 2026 updates and conference discount codes05:00 Introducing Jeff Reich, Executive Director of IDSA07:00 Identity Management Day: structure of a 21-hour global event11:00 Oceania and Asia region highlights13:30 EMEA highlights and powerhouse panelists from Copenhagen16:00 Americas region and the 11th grader presenting on cybersecurity20:00 Theme reveal: Finding Identity, The Search for You, Me, and the Machines23:30 AI and identity: guardrails, frameworks, and what organizations are missing28:30 Standing privilege is crumbling in the age of ephemeral workloads30:00 Is traditional PAM becoming obsolete?34:30 Zero standing privilege and the passkey journey40:30 Getting the fundamentals right before chasing the shiny tools46:30 Quantum computing, quantum resilience, and cryptocurrency risk53:00 Social engineering is still the biggest threat55:00 Identity Management Day theme song suggestionsKeywords:Identity Management Day 2026, IDSA, Identity Defined Security Alliance, Jeff Reich, IAM, non-human identities, machine identities, agentic identity, zero standing privilege, PAM, passkeys, quantum resilience, AI and identity, deepfakes, social engineering, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald

This sponsored episode is made possible by Evolveum, the company behind midPoint, an open source IGA platform made and owned in the EU that is in use worldwide. Jeff Steadman and Jim McDonald welcome Pavol Mederly, interim CPO at Evolveum. Pavol shares how IAM found him in 1991 while building an identity solution at a university before the term even existed. The conversation covers two core reasons IGA projects fail: data quality and slow application onboarding. Pavol explains how midPoint addresses these challenges with built-in simulations for testing and improving data quality, and midPilot, an AI assistant for faster application onboarding. MidPilot is supported in part by the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). Jim and Jeff explore midPoint's architecture, the real benefits of open source including transparency and no vendor lock-in, and advantages of being part of midPoint’s global community.Connect with Pavol: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavol-mederly/More about Evolveum: https://evolveum.com/idacConnect 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.comTIMESTAMPS:00:00 Intro and sponsor acknowledgment01:30 How IAM chose Pavol: a university identity story03:30 What is Evolveum and midPoint06:30 How Evolveum got its name08:30 Why IGA projects fail: data quality10:30 Slow app onboarding and AI-assisted connector generation16:30 The midPoint simulation feature explained21:30 midPoint architecture: Java, cloud, Kubernetes, and beyond23:30 Maintaining a large open source codebase25:30 Open source benefits: transparency and no vendor lock-in28:00 Community, meetups, and midPoint in the wild32:30 Mountains or ocean: a question for Pavol38:00 Wrap upKEYWORDS:Evolveum, midPoint, open source IGA, identity governance, IAM, IGA, data quality, application onboarding, simulation, AI connectors, connector framework, vendor lock-in, open source, EU RRF, Recovery and Resilience Facility, community, Prague, EIC, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, Pavol Mederly

Jeff and Jim welcome back Heather Flanagan for her fifth appearance on the show. Heather shares updates across a wide range of current work including her new role as content chair for the Identiverse conference, an appointment to the W3C Technical Architecture Group, ongoing support for NIST and NCCOE, advising the SIROS Foundation open source wallet project, and the continued growth of the Identity Salon. The conversation explores who is actually building identity standards for AI agents and whether traditional standards bodies can keep pace with AI development. Heather breaks down the authentication challenges posed by agentic AI, the problem of continuous identity and delegation, and why posting a spec on your website does not make it a standard. The discussion shifts to national digital identity programs in the US and Europe, the underserved relying party problem in credential frameworks, and why financial services may be the next major proving ground for mobile driver's licenses. The episode closes with a look at digital estate planning as the identity community's most uncomfortable but increasingly unavoidable problem.Connect with Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hlflanagan/A Digital Identity (Heather's Podcast): https://sphericalcowconsulting.com/digital-identity-digest/Death and the Digital Estate Community Group: https://openid.net/cg/death-and-the-digital-estate/Death and the Digital Estate Planning Guide: https://openid.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Digital-Estate-Planning-Guide-1.pdfConnect 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.comTIMESTAMPS0:00 Introduction and Heather's Conference Knitting Story6:00 Heather's Current Work: Identiverse, W3C TAG, NIST, SIROS Foundation14:00 What Is the Identity Salon?16:00 AI Agents and the Authentication Challenge22:00 Standards, Interoperability, and MCP25:30 IETF, W3C, and Who Governs AI Identity Standards31:00 AI in Standards Development: Opportunity or Risk?32:30 National Digital Identity Programs: US and Europe36:30 Mobile Driver's Licenses and Financial Services40:00 Digital Credentials for I-9 and KYC Use Cases43:30 The Digital Estate and Death in the Digital Age46:00 OpenID Foundation Resources for Digital Estate47:00 Identity Management Day Theme Songs and Wrap-UpKEYWORDSidentity and access management, IAM, standards, AI agents, agentic AI, digital identity, digital credentials, mobile driver's license, W3C, IETF, OpenID Foundation, FIDO Alliance, MCP, authentication, delegation, digital estate, identity proofing, verifiable credentials, selective disclosure, zero knowledge proofs, KYC, NIST, identity salon, Heather Flanagan, Identity Management Day, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald