Recently, I was re-watching the movie "Avengers, Age of Ultron" with my family. The first time I watched it, I was in normal movie watching mode and sat through the movie and enjoyed it for the super hero awesomeness that it is. What I am about to discuss has movie spoilers, so if you don't want to know what happens, I suggest you stop reading now.
Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) is not unlike alot of modern entrepreneurs (but fictionally alot smarter). Among things like an Arc Reactor and a flying weaponized suit of armor, one of Tony Starks crown jewels is the multi-functional software program called Jarvis. Jarvis has a 3D holographic display, voice input and communicates via natural language. It controls Tony Stark's mansion, robotic appliances and governs the computers in Iron Man's armor. To summarize; it is a very advanced software program beyond anything currently available in the real world, yet it appears to me that this genius programmer and inventor could probably have used some IT support and perhaps used some of the same best practices that we utilize for our clients.
Firewalls, Sandboxes and Antivirus:
In Avengers, Age of Ultron, Tony Stark brings in one of the Infinity Stones (specifically the Mind Stone) into his lab and uses Jarvis to help analyze this item which looks to be a complex brain like computer. Let's analyze what really happened. This is equivalent of someone finding a USB stick on the ground, bringing it into work and putting it on a production network server , then open the file on the USB stick that says "ReallyPowerfulScaryTool.exe" and click on it just to see what it does. The next thing you know your network is down, all your files are encrypted and you are dead in the water. In the movie, this Ultron Program with the Mind Stone wrecks havoc on his network and takes everything down. Are we surprised?
What if.....
What if Tony Stark had created an isolated sandbox outside of his main network, and perhaps launched a few localized virtual instances of Jarvis, then after scanning this with security software ,analyzed it safely and securely in this isolated network? Perhaps Ultron would not have taken his network down including Jarvis. It was also apparent that after the network was taken down and Jarvis appeared to be destroyed, Tony Stark really didn't have a good IT Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan. Maybe he could have fired up his remote D/R site, or used his Kickstart and Puppet environment to recreate his servers and pulled Jarvis 3.43 down from his git server, recompiled and restored his Jarvis database from his remote Mysql slave. Now that would have been an exciting action movie, or perhaps in reality, would end the Marvel franchise after boring the audience with another instance of IT saves the day.
This movie, however does showcase how technology can really do cool things and the more we depend on computers and software, we have to think about how to do it safely and have a plan to stay functional if things go wrong. The Internet of Things will continue to enhance our lives and a message to Tony Stark, "If you need some IT help, call me!"
