Identity at the Center

#429 - Sponsor Spotlight - SailPoint

Identity at the Center

Show Notes

This episode is presented courtesy of SailPoint. Rob Sebaugh, Senior Identity Strategist at SailPoint, joins Jeff and Jim for a wide-ranging conversation on the past, present, and future of identity governance. Rob brings more than two decades of practitioner experience to the table, including 16 years running large-scale identity programs before making the move to the vendor side. The conversation covers what identity governance means today, why it must move to the forefront rather than be treated as an afterthought in an agentic world, and how organizations need to think fundamentally differently about non-human identities. Jeff and Jim explore the concept of treating AI as a first-class identity, how AI is beginning to replace rubber-stamp access certifications, the shift toward policy-based access control, and the practical path toward zero standing privilege. The episode wraps with a lighter conversation about Rob's 3D printing hobby.

About SailPoint: SailPoint (Nasdaq: SAIL) is defining the new era of adaptive identity security. In a world where non-human identities now significantly outnumber humans, our AI-powered platform unifies identity, security, and data intelligence to protect today’s enterprise from advanced identity-based threats. We deliver the identity solution that spans both the breadth of identities and the depth of context needed to drive real-time access with confidence. Built on principles like zero-standing privilege and contextualized risk, our SailPoint platform transforms identity from a point of vulnerability into a powerful security advantage. Trusted by many of the world's leading organizations, SailPoint secures the enterprise with intelligent, autonomous identity security.

Learn more about SailPoint: https://www.sailpoint.com/

Connect with Rob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-sebaugh-1ba9013/

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 Introduction 00:48 Rob Sebaugh and the identity strategist role at SailPoint 04:38 Practitioner advice from the field 07:49 What SailPoint does: the hotel key analogy 11:04 Buying identity technology means buying a business process 13:30 What identity governance is and why it still matters 16:47 Risk-appropriate governance and privileged access 19:39 Non-human identities and the scale of the agentic challenge 22:57 Treating AI as a first-class identity 24:28 When AI makes governance decisions: beyond rubber stamping 28:04 Is identity governance a binary decision? 29:58 Securing data inside AI and large language models 34:09 Identity: the field that reinvents itself 35:01 Identity as the new control plane 37:21 Is all access privileged access? 40:25 Zero standing privilege in practice 44:22 Innovation, continuous identity, and what SailPoint is building 46:28 Identity posture management 50:13 Practitioner advice for the next three to five years 53:00 The future of IGA in ten years 57:44 Lighter note: 3D printing with Rob Sebaugh 1:05:35 Final thoughts on SailPoint

Keywords: Rob Sebaugh, SailPoint, identity governance, identity security, IGA, non-human identities, agentic AI, zero standing privilege, just-in-time access, identity posture management, control plane, zero trust, policy-based access control, AI certification, rubber stamping, sponsor spotlight, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald

More from Identity at the Center

Oct 19, 2026

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.

Oct 14, 2026

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.

Oct 12, 2026

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.

Oct 5, 2026

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.

Sep 30, 2026

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?

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