It’s pen-testing, ’90s-style—and it’s more exciting than you might think.

The techno-thriller film Sneakers (1992) follows a crew of experts who are paid by companies to test their physical security and cyber defenses—something familiar to pretty much everyone today, even if the concepts might have seemed alien to the audience at the time.

The team (which includes Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, David Strathairn, and Mary McDonnell) is pressured by federal agents (or perhaps fake federal agents?) into stealing a device common to any action movie: a mysterious black box. And this box, it turns out, breaks the encryption protecting the power grid, federal reserve, and seemingly every other piece of important infrastructure in the US.

In this installment of IT Brew Movie Club, we talk to Trevor Hilligoss, chief intelligence officer at cybersecurity company SpyCloud and former federal agent and FBI task force officer, about scenes in Sneakers that still hold up more than 30 years later.

Sneak along.—BH

LG screens are everywhere. The South Korea-based company’s displays are an integral part of modern life, appearing in public spaces, around corporate offices, and in the home.

Tom Bingham, LG Electronics’s director of vertical market sales, told IT Brew that developing the technology requires integrating software and hardware—and AI. More reactive screens require complex interactions and data analytics to provide close to real-time responses.

“The biggest thing that people are trying to work on now is making sure that they’re actually able to apply AI into the analytics around the data, ingest that data in real time, and then make decisions,” Bingham said.

How to get responsible.—EH

A new directive from the federal government’s top cybersecurity agency aims to lessen the danger presented by end-of-support edge devices—something that would close the gap for hardware security.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a Binding Operational Directive to reduce the risk from edge devices that have overstayed their security welcome but may still be in use.

CISA’s guidance directs federal agencies and departments to inventory and decommission said devices, allowing government IT desks to do so on a rolling basis before replacing them. The 24-month plan features benchmarks that the agency hopes will change how the federal government manages IT hardware.

It’s all part of the plan.—EH

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• Senior Consultant, Product Management at VISA
• Director, Solutions Specialist - Private Credit Workflow at Moody’s
• Principal Engineer, RFIC at Samsung Semiconductor
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• IT Team Lead (MSP) at DigaCore Technology Consulting