The film industry is running out of ideas. I know this because they have made 10 (20?) films about a group of people who drive cars aggressively (sometimes into space) and called it a franchise.
Meanwhile, the entire cybersecurity industry is sitting here, completely unrepresented, absolutely bursting with the raw material of cinematic gold.
Allow me to pitch.
Beverly Hills CISO
A scrappy security analyst from a small regional SOC stumbles onto something in the logs he absolutely should not have found. His manager suspends him. His manager’s manager suspends him harder. He is told in no uncertain terms to take some time off and think about his attitude.
He does not take time off. He drives to headquarters, badgers the help desk, sweet-talks his way into the server room, and solves the entire incident using a visitor badge, a packet capture tool, and the kind of confidence that only comes from having nothing left to lose.
The villain is the VP of Finance.
It is always the VP of Finance.
Lethal CISO
An ageing CISO who has been in the industry since passwords were optional and firewalls were a suggestion. His new deputy is twenty-six, has never worn a tie, and once gave a board presentation entirely in emoji. Together they are investigating a ransomware gang that turns out to be operating out of a co-working space in East London.
The old one wants to follow procedure. The young one wants to post about it on LinkedIn while it is happening.
Somehow, between the two of them, they get there.
The tagline writes itself: “One is too old for this. One is too online for this. Together they are slightly above average.”
Die Hard with a Patch Cycle
It is Christmas Eve. A lone sysadmin is the only person left in the office, voluntarily, because he is finally going to get through the vulnerability backlog that has been sitting at 4,000 items since April.
Then the building gets compromised. Not physically. Digitally. By a group of criminals who have decided that a financial services company with a skeleton crew and a sysadmin in a Christmas jumper is the perfect target.
He has no budget. He has no team. He has twelve years of suppressed frustration and a terminal window.
Yippee-ki-yay, patch this! (Doesnt quite roll off the tongue)
Top Gun: Maverick SOC
A legendary penetration tester, the best who ever lived, was pushed out of the industry years ago for being too reckless, too brilliant, and too unwilling to write up his findings in the approved report template.
He is called back for one final engagement. The target is unhackable, apparently. The timeline is impossible. The junior red teamers assigned to him are cocky, technically gifted, and have absolutely no idea what they are walking into.
He does not follow the methodology. He never follows the methodology.
He gets the finding.
F1: The CISO
He had one bad incident. One. A breach that was not entirely his fault, that happened during a period of significant organisational dysfunction, during which the board had ignored seventeen of his recommendations and the budget had been cut three times in eight months.
But the industry has a long memory and a short attention span for context.
He is brought in to defend a startup that nobody believes in, against a threat actor that everyone is afraid of. The odds are terrible. The infrastructure is embarrassing. His laptop has a sticker on it that says “I Survived a PCI Audit” and it is not ironic.
He is not here to be liked. He is here to prove that he has still got it.
He has still got it.
Predator: Zero-Day
A highly trained red team is sent into a client environment for a routine engagement. One by one, something starts taking them out. Not the client’s defences. Something else. Something that got there first.
The last one standing realises, with dawning horror, that they are not the apex threat actor in this network.
They are the second best.
Hollywood, my inbox is open. The industry has the stories. It just needs someone to write the treatment.
I am available.
Javvad Malik 