Unusual Suspects: Spacey and Mitnick Team Up

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Spacey!”

He freaked you out as a gruesomely creative serial killer in Seven, intrigued you with tales of Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects and drew you into his fatal crush on a teenage cheerleader in American Beauty…but what does Kevin Spacey have to do with corporate security? Quite a bit, it turns out. Spacey’s film company Trigger Street Productions is partnering with former hacker Kevin Mitnick and his new consulting company Defensive Thinking to produce a series of security awareness training films to help companies protect against Mitnick-style social engineering exploits.

The films will address broad IT security issues like viruses but are also likely to cover best practices around personal security issues like identity theft. According to Mitnick, the films will be 45 minutes in length and are due out in the spring of 2003. Far from the usual amateurish corporate video fare, Mitnick will be narrating the films, and the cast will be made up of professional actors and actresses. So, CSOs can finally entertain themselves with wondering who’ll be playing them when the day-to-day struggles of managing corporate security finally make it to the big—or in most cases small—screen on wheels.