Next Generation Enterprise Security

Josh Bressers opens with the idea that stories are how people learn best, and argues that Star Trek: The Next Generation is full of security incidents worth studying. He describes watching the series closely and cataloguing 178 threats, 54 of them insiders, then plotting them to see which adversaries recur. The data view shows that a few characters, including the android Data and the ship's intern Wesley, account for much of the risk.

The middle of the talk walks through specific episodes. Recurring themes include a starship with no authentication, a holodeck sandbox that fails to contain a rogue program, a supply chain compromise hidden in a shuttle's materials list, and malware carried in logs downloaded from a compromised ship. Each example is paired with a mapping to MITRE ATT&CK techniques and a set of suggested mitigations, such as segmentation, physical access controls, removable media restrictions and recurring phishing training.

The closing section argues that many of the fictional failures repeat because the crew never fixed the root cause after the first incident. Bressers suggests that practitioners use familiar frameworks and realistic tabletop exercises to pull lessons from any source, and that teams treat recurring incidents as a signal to change process rather than rely on luck. The humor keeps the material approachable, while the framework mapping gives defenders a repeatable way to structure threat reviews.