SummaryIn this episode, Eric Leach discusses his journey into the identity space and the key evolutions he has witnessed. He also shares insights into the challenges of building identity products and the importance of standards and open source. Eric then explains his transition to consulting and advisory work, focusing on helping companies define their product vision and strategy. He explores the concept of fractional product management and its growing popularity. Eric also discusses fractional leadership in product management and the importance of sharing experiences and lessons learned. Finally, Eric also explores the challenges in the identity industry and the impact of AI on identity and security.About the featured Identity HeroEric Leach is the founder and President of  What Why Consulting, Inc., which offers fractional Chief Product Officer Consulting services using a unique practitioner's approach that helps companies of all sizes build products that matter. Eric is a founder, entrepreneur, author, speaker, and product leader with over 20 years of experience at startups, scale-ups, and large software companies. He's held product leadership roles at Oracle, Salesforce, and Strata Identity, where he built innovative and market-leading identity management and cybersecurity products. He tells stories about thriving in a software product management life in his weekly Substack newsletter, What and Why.Reach Eric at eric@whatwhyconsulting.comEric's LinkedIn profile

SummaryIn this episode, Aldo and Brad interview Atul Tulshibagwale, CTO of SGNL, about the evolution of SAML and the challenges of authorization in the identity industry. Atul explains how SAML started as a solution for authentication and later expanded to include coarse-grained authorization. He discusses the limitations of role-based access control and the need for a common standard in authorization. Atul introduces CAEP (Continuous Access Evaluation Profile) and explains how it enables real-time session communication and dynamic authorization. He also discusses the industry's adoption of CAEP and the future of authorization in the identity space. About the featured Identity HeroAtul is the CTO of SGNL, a company backed by Microsoft and Cisco and founded by ex-Googlers that helps enterprises mitigate damage from identity breaches. Atul is a federated identity pioneer and the inventor of the Continuous Access Evaluation Protocol (CAEP). He was previously at Google, where his seminal blog post kicked off the industry-wide movement that culminated in the OpenID Foundation’s Shared Signals working group, which he co-chairs. Atul is also a Corporate Board Member of the OpenID Foundation. His leadership in developing and promoting SSF and CAEP, the critical zero-trust standards, has been influential in their widespread adoption. Apple, Okta, Cisco, and others have announced support for these standards. Previously, Atul was a co-founder and the CEO of Trustgenix, a federated identity pioneer that was acquired by HP. Trustgenix contributed to the development of federated identity standards such as SAML 2.0 and the Liberty Alliance Framework.Reach Atul at cto@sgnl.aiAtul's LinkedIn profile