Ep. 225 Why Identity is the First Pillar of Federal Security in the Digital Age

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Once the transition to the cloud became dominant, the importance of identity was placed ahead of permission to access apps and data.

When data centers were down the hall, one could have physical access to a room and sign-on permission. The hybrid cloud, private clouds, and an interest in “alternative clouds” make identity the keystone of modern computing.

Companies like Okta, Ping, and SailPoint work with identity and access management but rely on services that can provide a federated identity service.

Today, we sit down with Dr. John Pritchard, the CEO of Radiant Logic, and learn that Radiant does not compete with these well-known vendors but provides the backbone for their service.

Dr. Pritchard uses an interesting phrase: “continuous identity hygiene.”  This means that although a person’s biology will not change, he can compromise essential elements of his identity. This must be a continuous process.

This fact has been recognized by CISA and DoD’s 2027 Zero Trust Goals and can be identified as Identity Security Posture Management.

In this thorough discussion, Dr. Pritchard presents a 30-year framework for network identity and includes comments on a unified data layer, data staging, and how to select a reference architecture for using a federated identity service.