Your IAM program covers 35 critical apps. The company runs 550. Brad Kirkpatrick has heard that pitch more than once, and his answer never changes: if the other 515 have identities, they're in scope.
Brad has run global-scale identity programs as a practitioner and advised dozens of companies across industries as a consultant. His new book, The 7 Pillars of IAM Success, lays out the IAM Value Engine: identity that enables the business, strengthens security posture, and accelerates digital transformation.
This episode kicks off the Identity Jedi Show Author Series. We get into why you define value before you pick a tool, how to get a CFO to fund a program they'll never fully understand, where AI could finally fix connector sprawl, what an IAM degree should teach, and the Sunday night a missed contract renewal terminated an entire call center.
Plus: what writing a book really takes, and why agentic AI is breaking the identity playbook we've used for twenty years.
📘 The 7 Pillars of IAM Success: https://books.manuscripts.com/product/the-7-pillars-of-iam-success/
📬 Brad's newsletter, 7 Pillars Insider: https://7pillars.kit.com/signup
🔗 Connect with Brad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradkirkpatrick/
CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open: so you want to write a book?
00:40 Welcome to the Identity Jedi Show
02:00 What writing a book really takes (and where AI fits)
05:15 Identity news: why AI agents break the old identity playbook
08:00 Kicking off the Author Series with Brad Kirkpatrick
10:30 The lessons that kept repeating across dozens of IAM programs
11:00 The IAM Value Engine: business, security, IT
13:30 Define value before you pick the technology
15:00 ITDR, ISPM, SSPM: how do the acronyms fit together?
17:30 Speaking the CFO's language with business use cases
20:00 "We cover 35 apps. We have 550."
22:00 AI as electricity, and the end of point-to-point connectors
24:30 How a new identity leader proves value
26:30 "No one is coming to save you"
28:00 Run IAM like a business inside the business
28:45 Be the emissary: listen before you pitch
31:45 The call center ride-along
33:30 Designing an IAM degree from scratch
38:00 Learning Unix, LDAP, and the identity lexicon the hard way
40:15 Writing the book: a 20-page outline before page one
42:30 6 to 8 AM every day, roughly 800 hours total
44:00 Why editing was the real nightmare
47:00 Working with a publisher and an author cohort
50:00 IAM horror story: terminating an entire call center
52:45 It always comes back to data and humans
53:30 Wrap-up
54:15 Closing thoughts
What's your IAM horror story? One sentence. Drop it in the comments.
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