#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