The Identity Landscape for 2022

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And that’s when I really got a taste of how fundamentally broken things were, and where there was this opportunity for a digital first approach and starting to break some of these silos down. And that’s where I had the pleasure of hooking up with our founder and CEO, Travis Jarae. He left Deloitte for Google and saw that compared with the legacy banks, I think we had hoped when he took that job, I was thinking to myself, “Man, he’s going to get into Google. All he’s going to be doing is telling me how cool. What their building is. They got the smartest people, they got the best technology. They’re much more forward thinking than some of these older banks with mainframes and legacy systems, spaghetti code written in COBOL, all that sort of fun stuff.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And it turned out while the technology was better, and their approach I think was more forward thinking, they still had a tremendous amount of internal silos. They had six, seven different digital identity teams, even internally. And where from a user perspective, you thought, “Okay, I have one identity when it comes to the Google platform,” it really was not the case. You had all these different identities internally that they’re tying together after the fact. And that was when the light bulb went on for Travis, that there was really an opportunity to do something in the digital identity space. And he spun up One World Identity, brought me on board. I was employee hire number one. And we set about launching our conference, the Know Identity Conference, to bring folks together around this common vision of digital identity as an industry in its own right. And from there, we spun up our advisory services practice and that brings us to this transition to the Liminal brand.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
We felt the One World Identity brand was not really capturing the full depth and breadth of what we were doing around identity. And it sounds silly to say, but in some regards having the word identity in our company name, I think, was putting blinders around folks’ eyes around what we mean by identity. I think when you say identity, it’s a loaded term. People immediately gravitate towards, I think, some key mental areas of fixation. Like what you think of when you think identity. Obviously very cultural specific as well. But I think here in the US at least, people have a very rigid view of identity. They’re thinking like intractable attributes like name, DOB, SSN, physical cards, and not really thinking about the full breadth of identity, which we really view as any element of something, an attribute that says something about you.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
Now it could be something as concrete as your name or your social security number. It could be something as flexible as what the last five transactions you conducted on a FinTech platform are, what your credit score is, your location data tied to your mobile device, your electronic healthcare records. All of these things are identity attributes. I mean, we really still fundamentally believe that there’s a future where all these things can come together in a user-centric way and think the Liminal brand is really going to support that more easily. And also it has the benefit of maybe not sounding like some sort of a Illuminati cult or something like that. So super excited about what the future holds for Liminal.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And yeah, we’ve been saying since we founded the company almost six years ago now, that this is the year that digital identity is really going to take off, and, I, we truly believe that. And every year we’d say, “All right, next year is the year.” I think 2021 is finally the year where it’s, one, gone mainstream, but two, I think investors have taken heed. We’ve seen upwards of six, seven billion dollars of investment pour into the space just this year alone, and we think that surge is only going to continue because I think enterprises of all stripes are recognizing that if they are not thinking about identity in a forward looking way, they’re going to get left behind by their peers who are really putting identity on the front burner.

Kyle Holloway:
That’s great. I love the whole background, and certainly coming from more on the marketing side of the house of viewing identity in a very specific way, and historically, even just as more of a traditional name and address, because direct mail oriented and such and trying to resolve that, and seeing these worlds start to come together. Did want us to take a little bit of step back and get really basic and say in your view, Liminal’s view, the term “digital identity,” really what is that encompassing? And I ask that because a lot of times you hear, when people are talking, and it’s like there’s known, or terrestrial based identity, so thinking names and addresses, physical pieces, and then there’s digital, which meant maybe pseudonymized, but the definition you guys are really wrapping around that is really pretty holistic. So if you could just restate that definitively, when we talk about digital identity, it’s really this.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
Yeah, so not to sound too scripted here, but I think we have some good thoughtware that we’ve already put out and I’ll hew to that so we don’t confuse anyone. We really see digital identity as high value transactional data that supports foundational consumer and enterprise functions such as commerce, privacy, data protection, and reputation. And you can almost think of that as a quad Venn diagram with each of these circles having key areas of intersectionality, whether that’s trust and safety, whether that’s user experience, whether that’s risk management or compliance. I mean, digital identity sitting at that center, that nexus of all of these different spheres, which I think, again, drives to the all-encompassing nature of digital identity, and it can really mean… When you say anything to anyone, that sounds like you’re being facetious or overly inflating how critical digital identity is, but I think a good functional definition of digital identity really must include anything that a consumer or individual wants to attribute to themselves in a verifiable way.

Dustin Rainey:
Yeah, it’s interesting. If you think about it, my name is Dustin Rainey, I can say that, but when somebody sees me, they see that I have certain features, I like to dress a certain way, or I show up at a certain restaurant. Those are things about me. And you guys are really rolling all of that, which makes sense, into identity. It’s everything about me, all of my behavior, all that stuff that’s getting captured, especially in the digital economy, rolling back to my profile.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
I think where you maybe start to freak some people out is they think that identity necessarily means that all of those things are being shared. But in many ways, I almost want to stand that on its head. I think digital identity is just as much about what you are not sharing, what you are keeping private, just as much as what you are sending out into the universe, sharing with other consumers, sharing with enterprises. So just because it’s an identity attribute that you have that you don’t want people to know about doesn’t mean it’s not digital identity. And in many ways, I think that makes them all the more critical to encompass when you’re thinking about use cases, is I have certain things that I want to be secret and protected and private, and that makes getting this right even more critical because when something that you don’t want out there gets shared, it’s almost worse than maybe oversharing something you don’t care about, like I don’t know what my favorite band is or, or what my favorite color is.

Kyle Holloway:
So you guys at Liminal, you’ve published this identity landscape diagram for those of us in the marketing space. I think it started off looking very much like a Lumascape, lots of logos and everything, and then you’ve morphed into more of functional diagram. Talk to us a little about the evolution of that, how you guys came onto that, and how you leverage it today in Liminal work.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
Sure, thanks. So great eye. I mean, it definitely started off as very much an attempt to knock off the Lumascape, we felt. When we started OWI, one of our first areas of focus was get big and get loud, really preach this gospel of digital identity as an industry in its own right, and any industry worth its salt has a Lumascape or equivalent floating around. So we set out to really plant our flag in the ground and say, “Look, here’s all the companies that are in digital identity.” I think at the time some of them maybe would not have self-identified as digital identity companies, so it was just as much about sharing our vision with companies that knew they were digital identity, as much as it was helping convince folks like, “Hey, you think you are an electronic medical records company, or you think you’re an alternative credit and financial identity company. This is really your digital identity is what you are.” So getting that mission statement out there.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And it started off fairly manageable, three layer Lumascape. We had building blocks at the bottom in foundational technologies, then we had platforms and enablers, and then we had consumer-facing applications on top and started working and playing with breaking out those layers, then sub-segmenting those. We had three iterations of the landscape that tried to stick with that logo-centric approach. And soon we realized a couple things: One, it was getting untenable because companies were realizing they are digital identity players and we were running out of space to fit everyone’s logo in. And quite frankly, it wasn’t fun getting all the angry phone calls the day after we published saying, “Why didn’t you include my company on the landscape? Why we’re getting snubbed?” So there was that element to it.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
But I think more critically, it was getting so massive and the layers had become almost meaningless because they were so overcrowded that we were really struggling to say, “Let’s take a look at this landscape and then draw meaningful conclusions from how these companies are interacting with one another and how these stratifications are driving what the future holds.” And we went back to the drawing board and came up with this kind of… As it’s now known, thanks to our clients calling it this, “honeycombs.” So, it looks like a honeycomb because we figured out let’s think about what are these different market segments, how do they interact with one another, and how can we use this two-dimensional space to really inform our perspective on where the market is headed and think about where platforms are going to be moving next and how these individual point solutions necessarily must start converging as the ecosystem matures?

Cam D’Ambrosi:
We’re set to launch our next iteration of this soon, so stay tuned there. You can hit it on our website at liminal.co if you want to see the latest version of the landscape. But overall I think the real approach we’ve taken is trying to figure out how these different disparate market segments fit together and use that to inform where we think investment and enterprises are going to be driving these next-generation platforms. And I think you see that in the areas that have seen tremendous investment of late, and where you are seeing companies pushing in from the edge outward. So I guess it’s somewhat difficult to do this in a podcast, because normally I’m talking over a slide and we can reference this, but if you look at the middle of our landscape, we feel this anchor, this center of gravity is really around the identity and access management space with adjacencies in authentication, mobile identity, and device intelligence.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And that is because these areas are really the foundational touchpoints where identities are often created by enterprises or consumers, and then how they’re moving throughout the consumer life cycle, conducting various actions. And then around the edges, like in this back or left corner of the landscape, we have a lot of the consent management data privacy elements, and identity graphing and resolution is on that left side as well, surrounded by some of the probabilistic elements like behavioral biometrics, user and entity behavior analytics, adjacent to customer identity and access management. And I think that’s a major trend that I want to call out is we are seeing data privacy, user centricity, and taking even these probabilistic data elements that are being forged around consumers’ identities and tying them into a method of consumer control and interaction with them, this consumer control element.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And that’s where the IAM piece comes into play, whether it’s workforce or customer consumer IAM, is these are the touchpoints that are enabling people to interact with these identity elements that previously existed, but as far as the consumer was concerned were out of their reach. They didn’t know what information was being collected about them, how it was being collected. And more importantly, they didn’t have control, whether it’s revocability to say, “Hey, you have this about me, let’s get rid of it,” or more importantly, empowering you to take that and say, “Hey, I like that I have this facet of my identity and I’m going to extract value from it by sharing it out with a new platform or a new use case, and I want to be able to do that again in a user-centric way where I can authorize someone to access it, and then maybe later when I don’t want them to access it anymore, pull that back.”

Dustin Rainey:
Yeah, I like how you guys really rolled up all of those honeycomb layers into three primary categories. And you’ve talked about the probabilistic emerging around some of those, whether it’s machine learn, AI type things around behaviors, deterministic would be the other one. And then the third, what’s super interesting, self-managed. Do you see, I mean, you talked briefly about that right there towards the end of your, maybe this shift and accessibility of consumers to their own identity? Is there a winner or a loser amongst the three over the next decade? Do you see all three categories remaining relevant or do you see a major migration happening towards self-sovereign?

Cam D’Ambrosi:
I think that’s a great question. I think in some ways it’s really interesting when you look at what is the very center of our current map that is actually where these three colors and three types of data converge. And I don’t think that’s by accident. I don’t know if I would necessarily call out a certain type of data as a winner or loser, but I think to your point, the notion of user centricity and user control over all three of these realms is really what we are so excited about, and what I think is going to unlock tremendous value because you have your self-managed attributes. Right now I think the easiest way to think of a self-managed attribute is like something that you, as the user, are setting or controlling yourself, which username and password is the easiest one to wrap your head around. It’s an attribute that’s important to you, but you are the one who is setting what it is and you can play with it as you see fit.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
You have your deterministic data. I think that’s easiest. I referred to SSN before, that’s a classic deterministic attribute. You can think of it as being stored in a traditional database with rows and columns, like Cameron D’Ambrosi, his phone number is this, his SSN is this, his address is this. Things that can be can conclusively known to be true in an empirical sense. And then that third part is the probabilistic, and that’s a really interesting area because these elements are super helpful in adding value to platforms that don’t want to burden the user with a bunch of undue friction and they can unlock, I think, tremendous value in that regard because it is something that can be highly accurate when you’re thinking about something like behavioral biometrics or user and entity behavioral analytics.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
You as a platform, like a shopping platform, can tell if my account has been taken over by a malicious actor, just from whether it’s how they’re using the keyboard and typing and entering data that doesn’t jive with how I use the keyboard as a user, like the speed and velocity with which you’re adding things to your shopping cart, the use of a new payment method or new shipping address, you can pull all those signals together and say, “Huh, Cameron’s logging in from an IP and a device we haven’t seen. He’s shipping a $4,000 TV to somewhere we’ve never shipped before. And he added three high value items to his cart in rapid succession. Didn’t look at the reviews or the photos. And then immediately went to check out. And his mouse accuracy was high enough that we think it’s actually a bot that’s steering his mouse.”

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And that’s tremendously powerful because, if I’m a good user, don’t have to ask me for my user and password three different times every time I add an expensive item to my cart myself. But when an automated bot does it, we can throw friction at them and get these bad actors off our platform. So all of that is circling back to this intersectionality of these three data flavors, if you will. And I think you’re seeing successful platforms really incorporate best in class bits across each of these areas to improve their user experience as well as for the bad actors. So I have certain attributes that I might have set myself, like, “Okay, what is my email address, what is my shipping address, and what are my preferences for this platform?” Then you’re going to build this probabilistic profile around how I normally behave and use that to inform the risk that you see for my account. And all of that can come together in a user-centric way for me to control and revoke that access, maybe federate those preferences out to other platforms.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
So you can begin to see where I think there’s tremendous value to be had, which again is you’re delighting your good users and you’re thwarting the bad actors. And I think some of that risk reward equation can get lost. Folks running platforms get hung up on, “We want to eliminate all fraud. We want to cut losses.” And that’s great and I think that should be a priority, but you also need to think about who are my good users and how frustrated are they going to be with this experience. And I think it needs to be said because folks, I think, get hung up on some of these edge cases. For a given platform, majority of your users are going to be good users and you should really be thinking about how can we empower these good users and not throw the baby out with the bath water by looking to thwart bad actors, so to speak.

Kyle Holloway:
Do you find a challenge or much consideration on the opposite side of that equation, which is privacy regulation and this perceived, maybe actual or not, but perceived consumer pushback against tracking, surveillance, capturing data about the consumer, which, the examples you just gave, I mean, there could be consumer that would really lean against that and be like, “Hey, I don’t want you tracking my key strokes because you could also do other things with my key strokes from a bad actor perspective.” So how do you see the industry working through those, the convergence of, A, these major legislative moves, general sentiment, and probably a lot of misinformation with the consumer and then what the brands are actually trying to achieve?

Cam D’Ambrosi:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, I think this is the a hundred billion dollar question, maybe even multiples of that. Third party cookies, cross app tracking. I think it’s a challenge. Consumers, when you ask them, “Do you want to be tracked?” For the most part they’re going to say no. I think we had a really interesting collision of academic theory and how consumers actually behave with the launch of iOS 15 when consumers could opt out of cross app tracking. I think the privacy paradox academic side of identity would have deposited previously, when consumers respond to a survey, they say, “Yeah, I don’t like to be tracked. That annoys me.” But then when the rubber meets the road, they actually consent to more invasive collection of data than they would’ve told you in a vacuum.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
Then Apple allows you to actually opt out of this cross app tracking, and the take rate… Obviously Apple hasn’t shared the official statistics, but from what I’ve seen from third party surveys and collection of what apps are actually seeing, it’s like upwards of 80-85% of consumers are saying, “Do not track me across apps.” So I think that’s an interesting data point and consumers are stating pretty openly that they value their privacy. That in my mind does not mean that we should eliminate the attempt to improve the consumer experience and give consumers more targeted experiences and potentially more targeted advertising using technologies that incorporate your behavior and preferences. I think it is all about communication as a platform and sharing with consumers like, “Hey, this is what I’m going to collect from you. This is why I’m doing it. And these are the benefits that you’re going to see.” And I think when you can do that, there is a compromise ground to be had where consumers can, in exchange for surrendering some information about themselves, reap the benefits and reward of these personalized types of experiences.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
I think it’s still early days in terms of the impact that the potential complete deprecation of third party cookies is going to have on the adtech martech ecosystem and attribution and all of these other challenges, but I do think this principle of user centricity and the technologies that are going to enable consumers to share data about themselves in a trusted fashion is going to maybe allow the pendulum to swing back the other way, if where we’re headed right now is an extreme cutting off of all of these data sources and advertisers and brands and platforms really struggling to adapt to this new regulatory and tech policy environment.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
I think the more we empower consumers with control over their data and ability to safely share it, you’re going to see the ability for platforms to add value to consumers in a trusted way, by politely, and with full disclosure, asking for access to some of these attributes. And I think it can be a win-win. I don’t think of this as a seesaw where you have great UX and good experiences targeted advertising and all those benefits on one end and privacy on the other. I think we can balance those demands, but I think it boils down to user centricity in every sense of the word, whether it’s communication, whether it’s access and permissioning, and whether it’s revocability. I think that is the way forward and I’m hopeful that we can get there.

Dustin Rainey:
Cam, thanks for that response. And one thing that you said there, just going back to iOS 15, it’s like you threw out the word tracking across apps, and I know one of the things that we’re seeing as a path forward is really that first party transaction and the value that any brand is providing to the customer directly. So rather than having this cross-brand tracking device, like a third party cookie, the shift toward first party data being a central currency, and having that trust and transparency and the value exchange between the consumer and the brand being the most important thing. So are you seeing first party data? Where does that fit in in your diagram, and in the future? Do you see that being the path forward?

Cam D’Ambrosi:
I do. I mean, I think that’s a more brand… And again, forgive me for maybe not working in some of that lingo that you guys are using into my spiel here, but I think first party data is the future. And when we say first party data, that I think naturally involves an element of consent and user centricity. And going back to the central role we’re seeing identity and access management play in the future of our landscape, I think control of first party data is a big, big element of that, and in order to make first party data as powerful as possible, and to be able to use that in more expansive ways, it boils back down to how are consumers sharing this information with you, and then if you are going to federate that out in a form, how are consumers going to control that?

Cam D’Ambrosi:
And I think that again boils down to high quality identity and access management and that revocability and user centricity, which I think are going to be the key battle grounds as we move forward. Because we know for a fact consumers like good experiences and they want to discover new things that like, “Hey, if I’m a consumer who likes X, Y, and Z,” a lot of other people also enjoy these products. People inherently like that, and I don’t think they think it’s creepy when it’s done in a way where the platform says, “Hey, can we share some of these insights with you?” And I think that there’s going to be tremendous value in that, and brands that are able to capture that trust from consumers are going to be rewarded, benefit the most.

Kyle Holloway:
Well, unfortunately, we’re wrapping up time. Man, we could have this conversation all day. It’s kind of scary when you get three identity wonks on the phone and just keep rambling on. It’s great. This is such good content and really appreciate, Cam, you coming on and just talking about that broader ecosystem, I think there is a steady movement towards… I don’t know if you want to call it convergence or at least interoperability, as you’re saying, where traditionally those different siloed components across your Liminal landscape, they are really starting to collaborate more and lean into each other. So it’s an exciting time. There’s a lot of great stuff going on. So just as a final wrap-up we always like to ask a question, and I feel like you’ve already alluded to your view of whether there’s an Orwellian type future, the negative side of things, or if there’s a brighter piece, but just give us your parting thoughts as we wrap up.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
Yeah, look, I remain fairly optimistic in terms of my worldview. So I don’t necessarily think we have an Orwellian future on our horizon. I think I’m really heartened by a lot of the developments that we’ve seen stemming out of COVID in terms of both consumers and enterprises. I think taking digital identity much more seriously, wouldn’t call it a silver lining, because I think it’s been a pretty crap past couple of years in general, but I do think one of the things that we have seen as a positive that’s come out of this COVID era is a renewed focus, both on the consumer and the enterprise side, around digital identity and really examining these big ticket questions around what is privacy, how do I want my data being shared, and how can we move forward respecting both the needs of enterprises to understand their consumers and their behaviors, and governments understanding what attributes apply to a person and balancing that with the needs of the individual and their rights and desires to be private.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
So I think we will get there. I think we have a lot of the technology in place, and I think now is the fun part. It’s the coalition building, it’s the collaboration that’s the most difficult part, but I think also the most enriching. I’m a talker, if you all haven’t figured that out yet, and I’m a social guy, so really excited for what the future holds, and I think we have all of the pieces of the puzzle. We’re just continuing to lay those down and that picture is taking shape. I remain optimistic that we’re going to find a path forward that can balance the desires of all these stakeholders, whether it’s governments from the regulatory perspective, whether it’s brands and platforms from that business perspective, and then consumer perspective from that UX side of things, as well as individuals’ fundamental right to privacy and user control over their own data.

Cam D’Ambrosi:
So thank you so much for having me. I’ll toss out a shameless plug for the episode of State of Identity with the fine fellows from Acxiom joining me, so certainly check that out as well if you want to subject yourself to another half an hour plus of my voice.

Dustin Rainey:
Cameron, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. It’s always nice to see that there’s other, like Kyle said, identity gonks that are as passionate about identity as we are. It’s obvious in the way that you speak about it. And I know that our listeners got a tremendous amount of wealth, as I received a wealth out of this conversation with you today. And thank you to all of our listeners for once again, joining us on Real Talk. You can go back and listen to other episodes of Real Talk by going to acxiom.com/realtalk. We’ll talk to you guys next time.