This is a complete and utter spoiler for Skyfall and if you’ve not seen it yet you may not want to read past the read more button, which I’m going to place right up here for a change…
So first of all, how great was the film!!! I can’t say for sure whether it was my favourite film of the franchise but it was certainly up there. However, those that know me well, also know I think On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was also one of the better films, controversial, I know, but I’m never scared of a bit of that (I can explain why it has the formula for the best Bond film over a pint)!
Oh and by the way, as I do have a love-hate relationship with O2 (I am like some sort of mega fan of punishment or something). I had a free O2 Priority Moments Odeon ticket as well as my backup plan of 45% off Odeon, again with O2… both were refused at the Odeon Manchester on a Saturday afternoon. If I didn’t believe that EE were just trying to fake 4G, I’d move! (They’re using existing radio signals 1800Mhz to run 4G, technically this should be running on the same signal our analogue TV used to run on, which hasn’t even been auctioned off yet – hence me having a problem with it)
Anyway, on with the story… so MI6’s IT systems get hacked, by a disgruntled former employee –if that doesn’t relate to what I say about ISO 27001’s main point being, it’s not the IT you need to worry about it’s your people and paper, I don’t know what does. Maybe if MI6 had an Information Security Management System they’d have less of a story in Skyfall though. In actual fact, the entire film does serve as a good analogy of the change of security for businesses and even governments in terms of the damage that both IT and people can do to your information security. Amazingly, the lack of disappearing cars and high-tech gadgets in this film gives the actual tech-aspects of the film a greater degree of believability. Even the exploding offices!
Amazingly, he manages to blow up M’s office remotely (I know a lot of IT Managers and IT Support staff who’d like that functionality), MI6 is evacuated and they fire up their Business Continuity Plan. They end up in Churchill’s World War Two bunker under London and they get working again. Quite an expertly implemented BCP if I might commend the writers.
Of course, the InfoSec concerns still continue, 007 retrieves the laptop that was being used to hack into MI6’s systems and the now young and geeky Q makes the typical schoolboy error of plugging the company’s Ethernet cable into a laptop from an external provider. He then looks confused as to why he’s got a virus on the MI6 network and realises his mistake. Quite why he didn’t put it on the guest network is beyond me; perhaps MI6 should be outsourcing their IT to Unleashed?! I often wish I was James Bond, just for the day.
If you’re an IT Manager / IT Director / CIO or sympathetic Finance Director and you’re trying to get your board to invest in Information Security or a Business Continuity Plan, then perhaps sending the board off to watch Skyfall may be a good jolly that you can enjoy and absorb the message:
- Your employees are your greatest strength and greatest weakness
- Your information is your most important asset as a business; it’s what makes your business your business and not ‘R. Cain Widgets Ltd’ down the road
- Your Business Continuity Plan, if correctly developed and implemented when the need comes can get you operational again after many large disruptions to your business
- Your Information Security Management systems are great, can provide a competitive advantage and get people thinking about being more secure and protecting point 2) but are fallible by the people in point 1).
Whilst I hope you’ve enjoyed my analysis of Skyfall – I hope the serious message has come out. Unleashed of course offer solutions to mitigate the risk of the issues raised in this post and we welcome the opportunity to talk to you further.
