The movie technology that IT departments would love
Hollywood has very clear ideas of what computers are capable of. But which of its pipe dreams would actually help the modern day IT department? Simon Brew has some suggestions…

Decreasing Reliance On Human Beings
This obviously has a massive downside, ranging from less people in work, through to Cylons rampaging through the galaxy and destroying the world. However, one of the upsides of omnipotent and omnipresent computers is that more and more, human beings get cut out of the chain. The biggest threat to computer security? That'll be the person using it, and no matter how tight a strategy is put into place, it's bound to be a human being who manages to break it somewhere along the line
Obvious Visual Cues When Something Is Wrong
As many network administrators can tell you, many threats to an infrastructure can lie undetected for some time before the payload is activated. Although this is more common in small offices rather than big ones, a piece of malware can lie undetected for some time, wreaking havoc before somebody picks up on it.
No such problem in the movies, however. Here, if your computer is infected, your computer will have some massive klaaxon to alert you to the fact. There's no messing around, no snooping or anything like that required. When the fit hits the shan, you're left in little doubt.
All The Vital Data You Need Can Be Held On One Disk
A prime example of this syndrome is Die Hard 4 where the villains are able to download all of America's financial data onto a Palm PDA There is a certain advantage to having absolutely any vital piece of information you may ever need fit onto whatever disk you happen to be carrying. The Disk Full' message appears to be an alien concept to the majority of films and TV shows, and that makes a heavy investment in bank after bank of hard drives a less important one. Again, there's cash waiting to be saved
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