I have to admit that I’ve been a Vin Diesel fan since I first saw him emerge from the darkness of Pitch Black as Riddick. 1,000% bad-ass for sure. Since then, I also have to admit that like a few other actors, I don’t really care what the movie is, I watch it because I like them. And that’s really what made me originally sit down to watch Diesel as the car-driving daredevil Xander Cage in xXx.
One thing I had forgotten about the movie was the scene where Xander (Diesel) takes the heroine Yelena (Argento) to lunch at a fancy restaurant to try and explain to her that he realizes there’s more to her than it seems on the surface and to disclose that he’s actually a secret agent working for the NSA.
Of course, she doesn’t believe the smooth-headed, tattooed Xander could possibly be a real agent, and she’s busy laughing at him when her boyfriend rings, confirms he is really who he says he is, and asks her to bring him outside so he can kill Xander.
After she hangs up, she’s suddenly very serious. She looks at Xander:
Yelana: “Lets say you are who you say you are. What can you do for me?”
Xander: “What do you want?”
She then goes on to explain the details, they more-or-less agree, and then Xander ends up doing a bit of boardsliding down a railing on a silver serving tray.
And that’s it. The whole thing. The important part of the scene lasts almost exactly 10 seconds, and fundamentally, it covers everything we need to know when we’re talking about governance in our security architectures.
We have a couple of different players, and a couple of different missions. They begin interacting, they do some level of authentication of who each other really is and how they can possibly move each other’s mission forward.
After working this out, they come to an agreement, and then the rest of the story unfolds, ultimately ending up with the two of them in a tropical paradise together catching some rays.
In case you missed it, all governance is at the core is a set of agreements made in the hopes that people reach their objectives. The kicker is that sometimes the nature and scope of those agreements isn’t really all that clear—and neither is the real agenda or mission for everyone.
But it’s the web of agreements we need to understand, and that those agreements are made based on a set of objectives. Whose objectives matter?
That’s a good question. And it’s one we need to answer.
Because if we don’t, we won’t be able to figure out where to focus our efforts when we’re trying to figure out the risk profile involved with not only the objectives themselves, but with the web of agreements involved in delivering them.
Fortunately for us, Xander Cage isn’t the only one with some super, secret-agent level skillz. We have a few of our own, at least…we might—thanks to SABSA and knowing how to use it without getting overwhelmed.
With those powers in practice, we can quite literally save the day for our organizations as we do our best to keep them safe and enable them to achieve their own missions.
How?
Well…the details of governance wrangling are the focus of the upcoming December issue of the print Security Sanity™ newsletter. To get the scoop, you do need to make sure you’ve subscribed before the deadline at the end of the month.
Now, you might think $97/month is expensive, and…you might be right. Everything’s relative, and I can’t make the call whether the information contained in each issue is worth the price of one beverage of your choice a day. Only you can do that, Smokey.
If you’re ready, go here: https://securitysanity.com
If you’re in already, then great stuff. I’m happy to have you along.
If you’re not, and you’re sitting on the fence, then that fence is only going to be standing for a few more days before a big yellow bulldozer comes along and rips it up quicker than new puppy teeth can shred a suede slipper.
Stay safe,
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
