
Episode #101
What Cloud Identity Really Costs When It Fails with Chris Steinke, Director of Product Strategy at Semperis
This episode features Chris Steinke, Director of Product Strategy at Semperis. Chris has spent more than 20 years across cybersecurity, digital identity, infrastructure, and operations, including leadership roles at American Express and Early Warning Services (Zelle) and early work at MightyID, where he helped bring one of the industry's first dedicated identity resilience platforms to market. In this episode, Chris explains why moving identity to the cloud creates a single point of failure, why backup and recovery alone aren't enough, and why the next frontier is making trust portable, so applications aren't locked to a single identity provider. This episode reframes identity resilience as a continuity problem: not just recovering after an outage but keeping the business running through one. Guest Bio Chris Steinke is Director of Product Strategy at Semperis and a technology executive with more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, digital identity, infrastructure, and operations. Throughout his career, including leadership roles at American Express and Early Warning Services (Zelle), he has helped organizations build resilient digital ecosystems and defend against large-scale identity threats. As an early pioneer at MightyID, Chris helped bring one of the industry's first dedicated identity resilience platforms to market. Today, his work focuses on the future of digital trust, including identity resilience, multi-IdP architectures, and trust portability - the next evolution in ensuring business continuity in an identity-centric world. Guest Quote “We spent years making identities portable, and that's what we did really at the start. We were worried about the identities. So, the next challenge is how do we make trust portable?” Time stamps 02:11 Meet Chris Steinke: 20+ year Technology Executive 03:10 Why Identity Resilience Matters 08:43 Hidden Risks in Cloud Identity 15:52 Multi-IdP Failover Playbooks 23:06 Applications Are the Hard Part 31:46: The IRON Framework 37:35 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Sponsor The HIP Podcast is brought to you by Semperis, the leader in identity-driven cyber resilience for the hybrid enterprise. Trusted by the world’s leading businesses, Semperis protects critical Active Directory and Entra ID environments from cyberattacks, ensuring rapid recovery and business continuity when every second counts. Visit semperis.com to learn more. Links Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Connect with Sean on LinkedIn Don't miss future episodes Learn more about Semperis HIP Conference 26 is coming to Nashville, September 8–10, 2026. Join us to explore this year's theme, Redefining Resilience, at the world's premier practitioner-led conference focused on securing hybrid identity environments. If you love the conversations on the HIP Podcast, this is where the community comes together in person. Learn more and register at https://www.hipconf.com/ .






