SIDEBAR

Movie Review: Firewall, starring Harrison Ford

Indiana Jones as an infosec action hero? I had to see that. The question was, would I be rolling my eyes at every implausibility on the screen? Surprisingly, the technical security aspects were pretty accurate for Hollywood: a locked-down data center with no remote access, servers with no available USB or serial ports, a sprinkling of biometrics, smart-card technology and strong physical security. I had a hard time figuring out how our hero connected a fax machine's scanner bar to an MP3 player to garner bank account numbers from a screen; in fact, I almost took apart my fax machine and my son's MP3 player to see if I could duplicate this feat. But what the heck, it's only a movie. Still, if I were the bad guy, I would have found an easier way to steal the bank's millions than to go up against Harrison Ford.

-- C.J. Kelly

IPolicy Centralizes Firewall Controls