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.com

Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome and podcast life behind the scenes

02:00 Identiverse 2026 updates and conference discount codes

05:00 Introducing Jeff Reich, Executive Director of IDSA

07:00 Identity Management Day: structure of a 21-hour global event

11:00 Oceania and Asia region highlights

13:30 EMEA highlights and powerhouse panelists from Copenhagen

16:00 Americas region and the 11th grader presenting on cybersecurity

20:00 Theme reveal: Finding Identity, The Search for You, Me, and the Machines

23:30 AI and identity: guardrails, frameworks, and what organizations are missing

28:30 Standing privilege is crumbling in the age of ephemeral workloads

30:00 Is traditional PAM becoming obsolete?

34:30 Zero standing privilege and the passkey journey

40:30 Getting the fundamentals right before chasing the shiny tools

46:30 Quantum computing, quantum resilience, and cryptocurrency risk

53:00 Social engineering is still the biggest threat

55:00 Identity Management Day theme song suggestions

Keywords:

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