Mistaken Identity

Matt interviews Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. The FIDO Alliance is a non-profit association focused on eliminating the world’s dependence on passwords by driving the adoption of open standards for simpler, stronger user authentication. Today Matt and Andrew discuss the future of authentication as we shift to passkeys. Learn why they’re an improvement from the past, and why authentication is a business imperative. Video quote:“Authentication is not just a security imperative. In fact, it's more and more a business imperative, right? So when we talk about bottom line and top line, it really hits both areas because authentication should be a competitive advantage.”Key Quotes:“The fact of the matter is, passwords remain a threat to the integrity of the network economy itself. We need to move beyond those and that's what FIDO is doing in conjunction with all of our partners in the broader ecosystem.”“When we look at FIDO authentication and we look at our very audacious goal of replacing passwords with passkeys, we need to consider those advantages that they have and make sure that we're delivering the same thing with FIDO and with passkeys.”“Pass keys now are, I would say, the most elegant, seamless solution. The best way to actually get people in a truly passwordless form of authentication that's not dependent on any sort of knowledge based credentialing or any fishable methodology. So more and more, we're seeing a very rapid adoption of passkeys, because they're so integrated into the devices and operating systems that we use on a daily basis.” “I think two key metrics are: time to sign in and sign in success rate. Especially when compared to legacy 2FA. So, passwords plus something like SMS OTP and SMS OTP has its own flaws, but it's certainly better than a password alone. But when compared to that, we've seen companies find upwards of a 25 percent improvement of sign in success rate and over 75 percent time in reduction to sign in. Those are massive changes. Google reported four times improvement in sign in success rate versus passwords at half the sign in time.”“Authentication is not just a security imperative. In fact, it's more and more a business imperative, right? So when we talk about bottom line and top line, it really hits both areas because authentication should be a competitive advantage.  Authentication is a massive competitive disadvantage. ““I think consumers will associate a good authentication experience with a brand that's modern, that's cutting edge, that cares about them. These are all attributes that I think I would want to have someone think about me, not old fashioned, stodgy, stuck in the past, difficult to work with.”Time stamps:00:52 - What’s your identity?03:50 - Why passwords suck05:36 - The evolution of passwordless technology07:14 - All about passkeys17:47 - Marketing outcomes of passkeys20:32 - Passkeys are a competitive advantage28:52 - Future-thinking35:09 - Quick hitsLinks:Learn more about FIDO AllianceFollow Andrew on LinkedInFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about Okta Subscribe:On Apple PodcastOn Spotify

Matt interviews Sophie Crosby, Co-Founder of Paso Consulting, Former CMO at Ticketmaster, SVP of product at Salesforce, and VP of eCommerce at LiveNation. Paso Consulting, her current venture, builds and guides teams with marketing, insight and data expertise to improve customer experience and drive growth.Sophie describes the possibilities of emerging technology, the power of progressive profiling, and how to establish trust as part of a modern marketing tactic.---------Key Quotes:“A lot of people don't like change, and software and bringing in new technology is often about change. And it's often about changing people's roles quite radically, sometimes in an extraordinary way.”“Marketing, for example, has changed arguably more in the last three years than it has in the previous 30. I'm frankly overwhelmed by the balkanization of communities and channels and platforms, you know, um, uh, what many marketers as well have relied on over the last decade, which is really third party cookies. And, you know, having to be able to stitch together data or at least understand audiences in a way that really makes large scale advertising spend much more efficiently. That's all going to go away. It's pretty terrifying right now. Customer acquisition costs are going through the roof. Everybody's being told AI is going to steal their job. So, why am I passionate about this? Because I know it's going to affect everything.”“You enable this progressive profiling. I think that's a really important part of the marketers arsenal moving forward to start to really get deeper because as you start to look at the data processing capabilities that are now much more  available to marketers, not all companies, not all IT departments are making that available to marketers, but whether it's Databricks or Snowflake or Salesforce Data Cloud, the ability to actually store quite deep, resonant, important information, you know, whether it's a star scheme or how you do it about each customer, and then to be able to really serve them,  that's going to be super important, super important moving forward.”“I think marketers are struggling with an enormous amount of information. Um, and often in frustration over the last 10, 15 years, they've gone off and they've got their own technology… It’s that data and all the other data from all the other platforms. That's what the marketer is desperate for. And yet they're really dependent on data engineers and data quality and data architects and teams that they don't have  who are quite rightly busy doing lots of other incredibly important things for the business. And so there's a real frustration there.”“For quite a few years, I was going, everybody wants personalization. Everyone wants personalization. It's like, well, I do, but only when I want it. So there's an interesting thing here… being able to manage that balance, I think of privacy and personal is really important, but that friction thing. And it's trust, isn't it? And so allowing marketers to build trust with progressive profiling and showing that there is a relevancy and a timeliness.”--------Time stamps:00:40 - What’s Your Identity?09:16 - Building a really great product13:25 - Taking advantage of new technology23:39 - Avoiding data overload35:59 - Personalization in the age of identity sprawl44:29 - Quick hits---------Links:Follow Sophie on LinkedInFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSUBSCRIBE:On Apple PodcastOn Spotify

Matt interviews Randy Mercer, Chief Product Officer at 1WorldSync. 1WorldSync is the leader in product content orchestration: they simplify the creation and distribution of impactful content that’s accurate, consistent and relevant everywhere commerce happens. Randy talks about using AI to power seamless, quick, and safe online interactions while maintaining transparency with your customers.---------Key Quotes:“When you look at the aspects of keeping content current, that's really innate to what we've done as a business for many years in taking content from a brand and moving it to a retailer or distributor that needs it to run their business. And what we learned is that a lot of brands are challenged with that. They don't have some of the content or they're just not very good at managing it in such a way that it is kept fresh, accurate, complete as related to what the retailers and distributors are looking for. So, long ago, we started adding solutions to our portfolio that were very much aimed at helping the brands fill those deficiencies in terms of content creation and content management and then ultimately distribution.”“One of the things that we continue to evolve and refine is our understanding of the demographics that, number one, that content is going to serve. But then, number two, the personas and the demographics of the folks that interact with that content in a couple of different contexts. And one of them is really that consumer interaction.  When we look at the solutions that we have that produce that content that really are going to be consumer facing and empower a digital experience, we have a number of sets of analytics that relate to different areas of that content that are all intended to understand,  what is the interaction rate of the consumer?”“That's where we're finding more applications for AI: just in that reconciliation and that cross checking and the QA exercises that go along with it.  So for us you don't necessarily see it and it's not that exciting to talk about but that's where we're going to get more value out of it.  And give more value to our customers.”“It's a direct interaction with the consumer, but you don't need to know very much about that guy, right? How do you make it as easy as possible for that guy to write a review, yet still understand enough about who that person is that you can do some sentiment analysis later that's going to be helpful from a demographic perspective? Those are just two varying ends of the scale in terms of how we have to think about how much or how deep we're learning about that consumer and the implications of that. And where we can just not have to go that deep and, uh, and make it a little bit easier. And as you mentioned, just frictionless for the, for the consumer.”“As we've started to add some of these more consumer facing, uh, elements to our portfolio, it's really forced us to step back and just go all the way to the beginning and think about how can we do all of that in a different way, knowing that eventually the consumer is impacted, right? So it's just forced us to be much more consumer centric about how we think about the whole process, you know, and what, and that process we call product content orchestration, right?”“Today I spend just a ton of my time with some of those enterprise level customers on both sides of the fence, both manufacturer and retail. And that's what I'm there to learn is, what should I be doing to service them a little bit better and just make their lives easier, which is ultimately what I'm here for.”—---Time stamps:00:52 - About 1WorldSync03:27 - How to build a great digital strategy06:19 - Building up customer profiles07:56 - Finding applications for AI19:46 - Maintaining a user-centric approach21:43 - Driving innovation23:46 - Recent tech trends33:58 - How to drive conversions35:27 - Quick hits---------Links:Learn more about 1WorldSyncFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSubscribe On Apple PodcastsSubscribe On Spotify

Throughout this season, we’ve had the chance to hear from some of the best and brightest minds in product management. We’ve learned how big-name companies secure digital identities, protect their customers, and retain business. But one theme has shone throughout these conversations: our industry’s innovation is just beginning.As we look towards the future of identity management, it’s important to understand and consider what’s coming next. Let’s take a moment to look back on what our guests have had to say about how they are innovating for the future. ---------Video quote:MATT: Welcome to Mistaken Identity. I’m your host, Matt Duench. Throughout this season, we’ve had the chance to hear from some of the best and brightest minds in product management. We’ve learned how big-name companies secure digital identities, protect their customers, and retain business. But one theme has really stuck out to me throughout these conversations: our industry’s innovation is just beginning.As we look towards the future of identity management, it’s important to understand and consider what’s coming next. Let’s take a moment to look back on what our guests have had to say about how THEY are INNOVATING FOR THE FUTURE. --------Time stamps:00:39 - John Gannon, co-founder of Venture5 Media03:36 - Marla Hay, VP, Product Management at Salesforce11:30 - Shiv Ramji, President of Customer Identity Cloud at Okta15:59 - Trisha Price, Chief Product Officer at Pendo20:19 - Dan Schiappa, Chief Product Officer at Arctic Wolf, 23:38 - Arun Mohan, Head of Product at Credit Karma29:58 - Geordie McClelland, Head of Digital Strategy at Delve33:01 - Closing thoughts---------Links:Follow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSubscribe to the Podcast:On Apple PodcastOn Spotify

Matt interviews Geordie McClelland, Head of Digital Strategy at Delve. Delve is a product innovation firm that brings ideas to market, guiding clients to deliver faster and more sustainable success. Geordie explains the importance of staying user-focused in a tech-driven field. With a rapidly growing technology ecosystem, he says we need to serve users with smooth, secure digital experiences. One of the biggest challenges to that is slowing down users so they consider security and digital safety when moving through the online world. Key Quotes:“The focus still is always the people. Technology is gonna change and evolve and grow, but people's needs stay pretty similar and we’re always trying to figure out the best ways to leverage that. Those technological advances and service of people is just really exciting and intriguing to me.”“People's most likely response when faced with any product experience is to do nothing, or to take the easiest path. You need to be aware of what that threshold for security is gonna be…  a lot of it gets into user testing. Because at the end of the day, if it's not something that people are going to use in an easy, intuitive way, they're gonna find workarounds and that really becomes a security challenge.”“You need to design with an understanding that people's most likely response is to not do anything. And I love and respect people! It's why I got into this business. But also part of loving and respecting people is an acknowledgement that we all have some failures. And one of our failures is inertia. You need to acknowledge that you need to design around that.”“Stop people for even just a moment to reconsider what action they might take or hopefully not take in that scenario. Being more purposeful about talking about why security matters in certain places. And it can't be the five pages of terms and conditions, but just well-written UX copy that gives people the right information that they need, makes 'em feel confident in the decisions that they're about to take.”“From a user perspective, if you think about some of the challenges with facial recognition and how that doesn't track consistently across races. If you were to build something people first, it would act very differently. That means that marginalized communities may be further marginalized and we need to be conscious of that and understand what the implications are for that.”Time stamps:01:05 - Geordie’s role at Delve04:35 - Building products with critical security measures11:00 - Making products user-centric15:10 - Challenges of digital-first experiences21:25 - How to build a good product experience35:05 - How Geordie views innovation37:10 - Future-thinking44:26 - Quick hitsLinks:Follow Geordie on LinkedInFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSUBSCRIBE:On Apple PodcastOn Spotify

In product management, it’s easy to feel like your product is never finished. Arun Mohan, Director of Product at Credit Karma, describes the constant process of moving products forward. Matt also asks Arun about driving innovation, building the right work culture, and how to embrace the quick and constant improvement of the product world. Arun has spent most of his eight years at Credit Karma building the home and mortgage business from scratch. He’s a people-first product leader who thrives on building and inspiring cross-functional teams to create impactful products.---------Key Quotes:“I think from a mindset point of view, know that there is no finished product and it is actually the continuous process of improving your product, that is the art. And I think embracing that and appreciating that is half the battle, I think, to have the right culture within the team.”“Pick one problem and really go deep and really try to give it your best shot and focus all your energy towards that. That is one key element to building, to reducing the time to successful product.”“You can always make a product better. So you have to keep enjoying that process of continuously improving your product. That is product management. And I think you can ask any PM like, do you like your product? And most of them will say, not really. It could be better. Right? And it never ends.”“Make sure you have an outcome oriented culture and not a milestone oriented culture. I think it's gonna be really important. And this is where the role of the PM comes in. Your ability to set the context of what's the North star, what's the ultimate outcome we're driving towards, break it down into chunks and have specific outcomes for each of those chunks. And then how we get there is a team sport. Creating that sandbox for the team and setting the right outcome structure and learning structure is the PM's job.”---------Time stamps:00:53 What Credit Karma does03:44 Building successful products06:45 What does a good MVP look like?15:23 Balancing security and user experience20:51 Build vs. Buy26:02 Driving incentives across teams31:33 Future thinking38:01 Quick hits---------Links:Follow Arun on LinkedInFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSubscribe On Apple PodcastSubscribe On Spotify

In this episode of Mistaken Identity, Matt interviews Dan Schiappa, Chief Product Officer at Arctic Wolf. At Arctic Wolf, Dan works to increase the effectiveness of the cybersecurity industry through security operations. Today, Dan explains why identity is more important now than ever, and how security experts need to think ahead to solve problems in our constantly changing tech landscape. He also talks about using AI to sort data, fight bad actors, and prepare for a more challenging security future.Key Quotes:“For us in security, sometimes we get lost in thinking about where security is gonna be in the future instead of just thinking about where it and general society is gonna be in the future. And then how we build security mechanisms to protect that. The two key things are to solve a problem for your customer and also be out there looking for problems that they don't know they have yet.”“Identity is important now, if not more important than it ever has been. It's always been a big aspect of security. We used it for our authentication and access control and things of that nature, but now we can ascertain so much valuable information from the user for attacking things like insider threat for compromised credentials, and being able to enable things that help security, like zero trust.”“One of the things that really needs to happen is education of the end user. Saying 'Hey, you should have multi factor authentication turned on. And you should know that if you get a prompt that says you're trying to authenticate and it's not you, don’t hit Yes just to make the prompt go away.”“I’ll just take every bit of data I can get. And the problem is you get what I call data drunk. You just have so much data. You really can't make any sense out of it. And AI is not only great at detecting things, it's smart at telling you what you don't need as well. And so you can really focus on collecting the data that's important, that will help drive those models and help drive those detections.”“Real security is using multiple elements to drive an authentication, not just a fingerprint, but you start to factor in a whole bunch of different pieces of intelligence to know that it's indeed the right user. That's where passwordless will get real. Right now it is mostly convenience factors. We still have work to do to get rid of those passwords.”“I think in this ever-changing landscape, [security] just seems to be getting harder every year. Not easier. And I think the good news is for the most part, the defensive companies are keeping up. But it’s harder and harder to keep up because the adversaries are getting smarter and smarter. And generative AI and other AI methods at the hands of mal-intended people is just gonna make the landscape even harder.”Time stamps:00:43 -  What’s your identity?03:05 - Keeping customers at the center08:50 - Why identity is important right now18:40 - Leveraging AI for protections26:05 - Build vs. buy33:40 - Future Thinking41:05 - Quick hitsLinks:Follow Dan on LinkedInFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSubscribeOn Apple Podcast On Spotify

In this episode of Mistaken Identity, Matt interviews Trisha Price, Chief Product Officer at Pendo. Pendo is a comprehensive product experience platform that helps companies integrate product intelligence into their organizations.Trisha explains how the product-led movement helps us perfect the user experience, as well as how experimentation can help us remove customer friction. She describes pursuing constant improvement and constant experimentation to achieve the best outcomes for Pendo’s customers.

Get ready to dive into the world of product leadership with today's guest, Cassio Sampaio. Cassio has led hardware and SaaS product teams at some of the biggest names in tech, including Apple and Digital Ocean. Cassio is currently Senior Vice President of Product at Okta.Okta helps organizations worldwide bring their applications to life while navigating the complex world of customer identity and access management, or SIAM. Stay tuned as Cassio shares his insights and expertise, and offers valuable advice for aspiring product leaders in today's ever-evolving tech landscape.--------Key Quotes:“Every day is a new breach, a new type of threat, a new vulnerability that's out there. Our technology is that boundary in between your data, your privacy, information and the bad actors that are out there.”“People don't think of identity as you think of some other technologies that are out there, like cloud computing. Very few companies will think of building their own Kubernetes infrastructure or their own virtual machines, but identity is not quite there yet.”“When you look at the power of someone using a certain type of authentication technique, like how much faster they're able to resolve the challenge and with a rate of success? If you compare something like Face ID with a typical username or password, like an email link, it's faster and most of the time it's gonna be resolved with perfection because you tend to look like yourself, when you're staring at your phone, most of the time you're carrying your own thumb around. That type of thing.”“By using social login, by allowing you to sign up with pass key, for example, you will convert customers like this much faster. This much better quality of conversion. You prevent more fraud, you reduce exposure to account take over. Now you're talking right about business metrics that are mapped directly to log in. Log in equals retention.”---------Time stamps:01:40 Cassio’s Background02:40 Okta’s vision07:50 How to fuel growth11:04 Understanding customer identity16:50 The conversion funnel10:19 Build vs. Buy23:42 Ups and downs of building a product26:22 Importance of disruption29:50 Product management lessons35:57 Okta’s future38:54 Quick hits---------Links:Find Cassio on LinkedInFind Matt on LinkedInLearn more about OktaLearn more about Caspian Studios

In today's episode of Mistaken Identity, Matt interviews Shiv Ramji, President of Customer Identity Cloud at Okta. Okta is an independent identity provider that helps organizations securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time. At Okta, Shiv focuses on seamless and secure customer experiences. He is responsible for the Customer Identity Cloud product, data, security and technology strategy, and execution. Today, Shiv describes the holistic customer journey, how to trust your product intuition, and why storytelling matters for building great products.Key Quotes:“You need to think through all the pathways that your customers are gonna experience with a product.”“Think of all of your customer journeys holistically. There are ways to really configure all of these touchpoints, whether it's sign up, sign in, reset flows, adding authentication. It’s so much more than the login box.”“When you're building products, there's a portion of decisions that will come down to your intuition, your experience, or just your taste. So that's how I think of using data to make decisions. And using data to essentially know whether you're going after the right outcome.”“Great product managers are really good at aligning the team. And a big portion of your job is to take messy data or insights or information or feedback from customers, from internal teams. And boiling it down to the essence that matters and then aligning the team around that insight.”“You gotta be a great communicator and a great storyteller. Behind every great product that you know, or that you used, or have experienced, there is great storytelling behind it.”“Product managers don't necessarily think of storytelling as their job. It’s really critical. You have to be a storyteller for your own internal teams, for your stakeholders, for your partner teams. All the way to customers.”---------Time stamps:00:33 - What’s Your Identity?05:57 - ID Check07:30  - Build vs. Buy39:53 - Future-Thinking45:00 - Quick Hits---------Links:Follow Shiv on LinkedIn Follow Matt on LinkedInMore about Okta---------Subscribe: On Apple PodcastsOn Spotify

In this episode of Mistaken Identity, Matt interviews Marla Hay, Vice President of Security, Privacy and Data Management at Salesforce. Marla’s been at Salesforce for six years. Today, she works to make it easy for consumers to keep their customer data secure and private. When it comes to customer privacy, authentication tools are important to get right. Marla describes how to treat customer data carefully, and why that’s important to building great relationships. She also dives into her experience with user testing to build great products and improve existing ones.Key Quotes:“Consumer privacy is so important and fundamental to the future of where we're going with technology, innovation, and being able to provide an experience that is useful to consumers. It requires that they have inherent trust in their ability to give data to you as a company.”“It’s a very exciting time for authentication and it's a good reason to also make sure we're offloading things like those authentication capabilities to companies that do that. So I think it's exciting to see that.”“There's nothing like actually sitting with a customer and watching them use your stuff.”“Using data in a consented way and treating it very carefully means you're gonna have a really, really great relationship with your consumers. They are gonna continue to invest in you via their business and their data when you're treating the data the way they've asked you to treat it.”“We're super excited to be at the forefront of privacy protection around generative AI. I think it's really the combination of those things like user experience and privacy. User experience and security feel like they're a little at odds, but they're actually not, they actually go really well together.”Time stamps:00:30 What’s your identity?1:28 Why consumer privacy is important5:08 How to retain customers07:42 Leveraging customer identity10:02 How to improve the customer experience12:22 Build vs. buy17:03 Why testing is important24:51 Pursuing innovation at Salesforce27:58 Can any company disrupt?29:28 Future-thinking40:37 Quick hits---------Links:Follow Marla on LinkedInFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSubscribe:On Apple PodcastOn Spotify

In this episode of Mistaken Identity, Matt interviews Carlos Marques, Head of Product Management at Mobileum. Mobileum is a leading provider of Telecom analytics for security and risk management. There, Carlos works with intricate software products and successfully launches them worldwide. In this episode, Carlos describes the risks of merging physical and digital identities when it comes to fraud and risk management. He explains how to test and design secure and seamless products. Carlos also shares some of his experience for what makes a great product manager, and advice for others in the space.Key Quotes:“Fraud management is different from revenue assurance because in revenue assurance, you are losing money because you've committed some errors due to misconfiguration or any part of the process that you have might be missed. In fraud, there is a deliberate attempt to explore the flaws in order to commit fraud and monetize it.”“Now, physical identities and digital identities are merging. So if you think about omni-channel experience, you might go into a store and someone asks you for your ID to buy a service. But if you are coming from a website, probably you will not be able to do those kinds of checks. And if you want to accelerate the experience itself, you might even use social media IDs in order to accelerate the ease of experience and acquiring products. So the two are merging. And at one point you can start with one identity.”“Nowadays, phones are becoming almost like a passport. They are becoming, let's say, your identity. So you have information on your phone that picks on some of your physical attributes… And that is what is going to allow you to enable really fast access to new services like banking services or other services that might require identity checks. ”“You need to identify risks. You need to identify the controls, and that's why we talk about continuous control monitoring. Depending on the part of the process that you are coming to, you will need to put the right controls in place.”“I want to get it right since day one. I don't want to get into a process that someone designed that I'm not able to understand, or that I have to memorize a lot of passwords or be concerned that I'm reusing the password again. I want a seamless experience. I want something that is easy to do.”“Product managers have to know how to be a storyteller. You need to do storytelling for the ones that are going to sponsor your product. I'm talking about the management or your manager. You need to be an inspiring person to do storytelling with the engineers so that they all get in the same mood. And if you want to test it in front of the customers, you might also want to do some storytelling in order to sell it.”Time Stamps00:20 What Carlos does02:01 Mobileum’s risk strategy05:28 Understanding digital risk08:50 Identity passports12:54 Digitizing verifiable credentials18:09 Building great customer experiences23:29 Great product innovations27:50 How do you know you’re building the right thing?32:06 Build vs. buy40:20 Advice for product managers41:36 The importance of storytelling42:05 Quick hitsLinks:Follow Carlos on LinkedInLearn more about MobileumFollow Matt on LinkedInMore about OktaSubscribe:On Apple PodcastsOn Spotify

In this episode of Mistaken Identity, Matt interviews John Gannon, co-founder of Venture5 Media. At Venture5 Media, John helps buy and back creator-led businesses. John’s product leadership and business development experience spans leading cross-functional product teams at DigitalOcean, Amazon, AWS, and Turbonomic. John spent more than a decade building Venture Capital content and education products. He’s an active investor and advisor for more than 20 startups.In this episode, John describes how to empower your product team, inspire creators, and provide growth opportunities. He also explains the importance of experimentation for creating the best product possible.

In a world where meeting your customers face-to-face is no longer the norm, businesses are faced with a new challenge: how to build meaningful relationships with their customers in the digital age, without really knowing who they are?It is possible. Enter “Mistaken Identity," a podcast that helps you look at your customers’ modern digital identities in a whole new way so you can protect and delight them by creating amazing, secure customer experiences.Together with experienced product leaders, we’ll debunk myths, misperceptions and share actionable ways to leverage identity knowledge toward building better products and experiences.So whether you’re a product manager, digital marketer or entrepreneur, join us for “Mistaken Identity: Unexpected Lessons for Building Great Products Customers Love”.Brought to you by Okta, the World’s Identity Company.