AWS Security Profile: Liam Wadman, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS Identity

In the AWS Security Profile series, I interview some of the humans who work in AWS Security and help keep our customers safe and secure. In this profile, I interviewed Liam Wadman, Senior Solutions Architect for AWS Identity.

Pictured: Liam making quick informed decisions about risk and reward

How long have you been at AWS and what do you do in your current role?

My first day was 1607328000 — for those who don’t speak fluent UTC, that’s December 2020. I’m a member of the Identity Solutions team. Our mission is to make it simpler for customers to implement access controls that protect their data in a straightforward and consistent manner across AWS services.

I spend a lot of time talking with security, identity, and cloud teams at some of our largest and most complex customers, understanding their problems, and working with teams across AWS to make sure that we’re building solutions that meet their diverse security requirements.

I’m a big fan of working with customers and fellow Amazonians on threat modeling and helping them make informed decisions about risks and the controls they put in place. It’s such a productive exercise because many people don’t have that clear model about what they’re protecting, and what they’re protecting it from.

When I work with AWS service teams, I advocate for making services that are simple to secure and simple for customers to configure. It’s not enough to offer only good security controls; the service should be simple to understand and straightforward to apply to meet customer expectations.
 

How did you get started in security? What about it piqued your interest?

I got started in security at a very young age: by circumventing network controls at my high school so that I could play Flash games circa 2004. Ever since then, I’ve had a passion for deeply understanding a system’s rules and how they can be bent or broken. I’ve been lucky enough to have a diverse set of experiences throughout my career, including working in a network operation center, security operation center, Linux and windows server administration, telephony, investigations, content delivery, perimeter security, and security architecture. I think having such a broad base of experience allows me to empathize with all the different people who are AWS customers on a day-to-day basis.

As I progressed through my career, I became very interested in the psychology of security and the mindsets of defenders, unauthorized users, and operators of computer systems. Security is about so much more than technology—it starts with people and processes.
 

How do you explain your job to non-technical friends and family?

I get to practice this question a lot! Very few of my family and friends work in tech.

I always start with something relatable to the person. I start with a website, mobile app, or product that they use, tell the story of how it uses AWS, then tie that in around how my team works to support many of the products they use in their everyday lives. You don’t have to look far into our customer success stories or AWS re:Invent presentations to see a product or company that’s meaningful to almost anyone you’d talk to.

I got to practice this very recently because the software used by my personal trainer is hosted on AWS. So when she asked what I actually do for a living, I was ready for her.
 

In your opinion, what’s the coolest thing happening in identity right now?

You left this question wide open, so I’m going to give you more than one answer.

First, outside of AWS, it’s the rise of ubiquitous, easy-to-use personal identity technology. I’m talking about products such as password managers, sign-in with Google or Apple, and passkeys. I’m excited to see the industry is finally offering services to consumers at no extra cost that you don’t need to be an expert to use and that will work on almost any device you sign in to. Everyday people can benefit from their use, and I have successfully converted many of the people I care about.

At AWS, it’s the work that we’re doing to enable data perimeters and provable security. We hear quite regularly from customers that data perimeters are super important to them, and they want to see us do more in that space and keep refining that journey. I’m all too happy to oblige. Provable security, while identity adjacent, is about getting real answers to questions such as “Can this resource be accessed publicly?” It’s making it simple for customers who don’t want to spend the time or money building the operational expertise to answer tough questions, and I think that’s incredible.
 

You presented at AWS re:Inforce 2023. What was your session about and what do you hope attendees took away from it?

My session was IAM336: Best practices for delegating access on IAM. I initially delivered this session at re:Inforce 2022, where customers gave it the highest overall rating for an identity session, so we brought it back for 2023! 

The talk dives deep into some AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) primitives and provides a lot of candor on what we feel are best practices based on many of the real-world engagements I’ve had with customers. The top thing that I hope attendees learned is how they can safely empower their developers to have some self service and autonomy when working with IAM and help transform central teams from blockers to enablers.

I’m also presenting at re:Invent 2023 in November. I’ll be doing a chalk talk called Best practices for setting up AWS Organizations policies. We’re targeting it towards a more general audience, not just customers whose primary jobs are AWS security or identity. I’m excited about this presentation because I usually talk to a lot of customers who have very mature security and identity practices, and this is a great chance to get feedback from customers who do not.

I’d like to thank all the customers who attended the sessions over the years — the best part of AWS events is the customer interactions and fantastic discussions that we have.
 

Is there anything you wish customers would ask about more often?

I wish more customers would frame their problems within a threat model. Many customer engagements start with a specific problem, but it isn’t in the context of the risk this poses to their business, and often focuses too much on specific technical controls for very specific issues, rather than an outcome that they’re trying to arrive at or a risk that they’re trying to mitigate. I like to take a step back and work with the customer to frame the problem that they’re talking about in a bigger picture, then have a more productive conversation around how we can mitigate these risks and other considerations that they may not have thought of.
 

Where do you see the identity space heading in the future?

I think the industry is really getting ready for an identity renaissance as we start shifting towards more modern and Zero Trust architectures. I’m really excited to start seeing adoption of technologies such as token exchange to help applications avoid impersonating users to downstream systems, or mechanisms such as proof of possession to provide scalable ways to bind a given credential to a system that it’s intended to be used from.

On the AWS Identity side: More controls. Simpler. Scalable. Provable.
 

What are you most proud of in your career?

Getting involved with speaking at AWS: presenting at summits, re:Inforce, and re:Invent. It’s something I never would have seen myself doing before. I grew up with a pretty bad speech impediment that I’m always working against.

I think my proudest moment in particular is when I had customers come to my re:Invent session because they saw me at AWS Summits earlier in the year and liked what I did there. I get a little emotional thinking about it.

Being a speaker also allowed me to go to Disneyland for the first time last year before the Anaheim Summit, and that would have made 5-year-old Liam proud.
 

If you had to pick a career outside of tech, what would you want to do?

I think I’d certainly be involved in something in forestry, resource management, or conservation. I spend most of my free time in the forests of British Columbia. I’m a big believer in shinrin-yoku, and I believe in being a good steward of the land. We’ve only got one earth.

 
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