#443 - Ghosts in the Machine with John Huyette and Omer Arshed

Jeff and Jim are joined by John Huyette, AI Risk Leader at RSM, and Omer Arshed, North American Digital Identity Leader at RSM, to explore how identity controls can help organizations manage the growing risks of AI agents. John introduces five laws for managing AI risk: governability, lineage and integrity, trust boundaries, authority containment, and human impact. The conversation connects those ideas to familiar IAM principles including ownership, auditability, zero trust, least privilege, just-in-time access, privileged access management, and continuous monitoring. They also discuss prompt injection, shadow AI, human accountability, and why organizations should start by building an honest inventory of the AI capabilities already operating in their environments.

5 Laws of AI Risk: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7487942457075257344/

Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-huyette-1373906/

Connect with Omer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omerarshed/

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction, 3D printing, and conference updates

06:58 Introducing John Huyette and Omer Arshed

07:52 John’s path from technology risk to AI risk

12:11 Omer’s identity origin story

13:43 The five laws for managing AI risk

18:00 What “ghosts in the machine” means for identity

20:17 Governability and ownership of AI identities

25:17 Do you know what has access to what?

29:43 Applying decades of IAM lessons to AI

32:35 Lineage and integrity

35:20 Building an AI bill of materials

37:12 Trust boundaries and external data

38:36 Prompt injection and untrusted content

42:48 Applying zero trust principles to AI agents

47:26 Authority containment

49:56 PAM, least privilege, and just-in-time agent access

56:22 Human impact and accountability

58:41 Is agentic AI really a new identity problem?

01:02:35 Starting with lower-risk AI use cases

01:04:21 Where organizations should start

01:05:07 Shadow AI and zombie accounts

01:07:09 What excuses would an AI give during an access review?

01:12:20 Wrap-up

Keywords

IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald, John Huyette, Omer Arshed, RSM, AI risk, AI agents, agentic AI, AI governance, governability, lineage and integrity, trust boundaries, authority containment, human impact, shadow AI, identity governance, IAM, zero trust, privileged access management, PAM, least privilege, just-in-time access, non-human identity, NHI, prompt injection, AI identity, access governance, continuous monitoring