In Partnership With

Wondering how to tackle CIAM in 2025? Don’t worry, Descope has got your back; in fact, they’ve got an entire webinar on just that topic. I’m a huge fan of the team over at Descope; they’ve built a great product that is easy to use and really puts the fun back in development. ( Yeah, you read that right!) Happy to have them as a partner! Show them love and check out their webinar on CIAM here

Identity is your best friend.

It always has been, but I digress. I would love to see more security leaders start welcoming the world of identity into their programs.

Ummm…say what now?

Some troubling times for our pals, the Big O. Recent news of a data breach has Oracle doing the Spiderman meme.

Leovici Brand Ambassador

Love the gear from Leovici! My favorite so far are these athletic joggers. Great for a workout, or just comfortably lounging around the house. Recently rocked these as my airport gear and I loved it. Soft feel, with a great fit. And of course as a subscriber I’ve got discounts for you.

Use code: IDENTIYJEDI to get 15% off!

This Week in Identity: Bringing Observability to the Forefront

This week’s pick is a must-read from my longtime friend and mentor, Darran Rolls: “Bringing Observability to the Forefront of IAM” over at Identity Innovation Labs. Darran and I go way back, and if you’ve ever had the chance to hear him speak or read his work, you already know he doesn’t just ride the wave—he shapes the tide. This blog is no exception.

The core premise is something I wholeheartedly agree with: you can’t manage what you can’t see. That’s not just a catchy phrase—it’s the quiet truth that haunts many IAM programs. We’ve built our identity ecosystems assuming we had visibility, but in reality, most programs are flying blind in key areas. Darran lays it out beautifully using a play on the Johari Window—coining what he calls the Identi-hari Window—to categorize the “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and more ominously, the “unknown unknowns” in identity.

Let me pause and say this: if you lead or support any kind of IAM initiative and you haven’t asked yourself, “What identity activity am I not seeing?”—now is the time.

What I love about this post is how it moves the conversation beyond ITDR. It’s not just about detecting threats; it’s about enabling identity observability across the board. And Darran makes a strong case for adopting OpenTelemetry—something that’s traditionally been the domain of app performance and DevOps—and bringing it into the world of IAM. The idea of retrofitting telemetry into legacy and cloud identity systems without breaking the app? That’s the kind of practical innovation IAM needs.

But it’s not just the tech that excites me—it’s the why. Darran’s vision is about building a more honest, transparent view of identity activity. The kind of visibility that lets you see the service account quietly elevating privileges, or the orphaned SaaS integration still authenticating months after a project sunset. That’s what modern IAM demands.

One question I kept coming back to as I read this: Where do Shared Signals fit into this story? For those not familiar, Shared Signals and Events (SSE) is an open standard for exchanging identity and security event data between systems. It feels like a natural partner to the observability approach—especially when you’re trying to close visibility gaps across federated identity systems, or react to real-time trust decisions. Could SSE act as a kind of telemetry amplifier? I’d love to hear Darran’s thoughts on that (and you better believe I’ll be texting him after I hit publish on this).

Bottom line: this blog is a reminder that identity isn’t just about granting access—it’s about seeing the whole picture. And as we head into a future filled with AI-driven behavior analysis and real-time access decisions, observability may be the superpower we didn’t know we needed.

Read it here: Bringing Observability to the Forefront of IAM

—

✊🏾 Stay curious,

The Identity Jedi Universe

Powered by OnTheCornerMedia

Be Good to each other, Be Kind to each other, Love each other

-Identity Jedi