https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/28/smallstep-takes-big-step-toward-authenticating-machine-to-machine-communications/

Smallstep founder and CEO Mike Malone calls big, distributed systems his happy place, but these systems involve a lot of machine-to-machine communications, an area identity vendors haven’t been able to solve. The central issue is that when there are no humans involved, how do you authenticate the hand-off between machines to ensure it’s going to the right place?

“Fundamentally, identity in distributed systems is an unsolved problem. So all these different components that need to talk to one another, they need to identify one another just like a person logging into a website,” Malone explained.