Kayla and Taylor take to pop culture references and how that intersects with Security.
Hosts: Kayla Williams
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/kayla-williams
Taylor Parsons
On ITSPmagazine | https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/taylor-parsons
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Episode Description
Kayla and Taylor take to pop culture references and how that intersects with Security. We dive deep into some of the best cultural references to security, hacking, and technology when it comes to books, tv shows, and movies.
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Resources
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For more podcast stories from The Locked Down Podcast With Kayla Williams and Taylor Parsons: https://itspmagazine.com/locked-down-podcast
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Cybersecurity and Pop Culture | Locked Down Podcast With Kayla Williams and Taylor Parsons
Kayla: [00:00:00] Welcome to the latest episode of Lockdown with Kayla and Taylor. With cybersecurity encompassing so many facets of business risk and life, it can be overwhelming and stressful. With our help, you'll be able to make sense of it all. This week, we are discussing a really fun topic. I know that at least it often comes up in my house because we are TV and movie junkies here.
Cybersecurity. So these portrayals can significantly differ from real world practices, creating a mix of accurate representations and overly exaggerated or unrealistic scenarios. So Taylor I know you and I have discussed this a few times and from what you've seen, how the cybersecurity in real life compared to what's depicted in the media.
Taylor: It, Ooh, it widely varies, right? There's several different media outlets and media types that portray cybersecurity differently. And like the different aspects of [00:01:00] security, red teaming, blue teaming, purple teaming nation state actors, even. It's all over the, it's all over the place.
You've got. Books, you've got TV shows, you've got movies, you've got all of these, great media representations that sometimes at the base value of what you start to look at, the practices are Sometimes legitimate the execution is often not accurate or it's over dramatized.
Kayla: Yeah, just, I don't know, maybe two weeks ago we introduced our seven year old to Jurassic Park. And
The
dinosaurs. Yes, she loved it. Especially since like right before that we showed her avatar and she was very confused, but anyway the scenes, when they're trying to hack in and get the lights turned on and how quick it is.
And she was like, mom is that what you do? Is it, I was like no, it's not. [00:02:00] And. How old is this? Fourteen? Fourteen year old girl would not have been able to get into the systems as quickly as she did and doing all this. Yeah, it's just, it's. But,
Taylor: but the way that she traversed the file system, granted, I don't think that, I don't think that the Unix flavor that she was using would have had a graphical interface in 1993,
I believe, right? Yeah. 1993. Fun fact, all the Jurassic Park movies always come out within a week of my birthday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: Oh, that is a fun one. Every single one of them.
Taylor: They're always like a June, they're always a June release.
Kayla: It's just because, you're special. Summertime
Taylor: Blockbuster.
Kayla: Yeah. I think in, the media, often portrays hackers breaking into secured systems within seconds. It's, flashy interfaces, with the exception of Jurassic Park, because it was 1993 and rap, the rapid typing that, I could type really fast, [00:03:00] but not that fast where in the reality it involves meticulous planning, reconnaissance, which is One of my favorite words because I can never spell it right.
And then exploiting vulnerabilities, which we know now can take days, weeks, months. And it is like a full on, effort. And it's not as easy as some of these movies depict it to be.
Taylor: 100%. And I think like one of the biggest like dramatizations whenever you start thinking about things like that is, whenever you start thinking about like the CSIs and the NCISs and other TV shows like that, where it's like, Oh, I'm going to start pinpointing this phone or I'm going to break into this laptop.
All I need is the IP. And it's one that computers on a private IP and a home network. So you actually need like the home IP address. And then you have to find a way to get into the home network, which [00:04:00] is usually like a brute force attack or, looking for a back door again, like that goes to reconnaissance it's not like this 32nd thing, but.
That also if you inversely think about it, opening the door to attackers is that easy.
Kayla: Yeah.
Taylor: Sure. You hear I guess they finally arrested him. But everyone's favorite prince from Africa that was offering all of that money. All you had to do was, wire that, 2, 000 and you'd become a millionaire.
But opening the door to attacks Is extremely easy. It could be as easy as opening up a team viewer or, some type of RDP session where you're giving them direct access. And so that's where. There's a balance of like reality and dramatization. So as experts and, I even do this with action movies with my background where I'm like, [00:05:00] ah, he would he would have ran out of ammunition by now.
The guy that has unlimited ammo and you're like,
Kayla: That's movies and TV, right? It's all about the dramatization. My favorite that I've seen recently actually a lot more on Twitter. I can't call it X. I'm sorry. Has been the, the hackers with the hoodies up. Yeah. They, I'm sorry.
It's, It is 70 degrees right now and I'm not wearing a hoodie, but yes, exactly like that. In a dark room, they're being portrayed as these lone geniuses, that lone wolf with a supernatural ability to manipulate any system put in front of them without knowing anything about it at all. In a very short window of time.
What are your thoughts on that portrayal?
Taylor: So there are people that are extremely adept in deceptive or deception technologies that fit that persona a hundred [00:06:00] percent. I think that, the more that things get circulated around social media one of the biggest like groups activists, however you want to classify them, that really started to reinstill that persona of, being in a dark room with a large monitor.
With a hoodie up, looking down at a bright screen was anonymous. They played into that perfectly and they were able to garner so much attention with, the way that they exploited systems the way that they meticulously chose their targets and, their exploits.
So that. With the shock and awe culture that we're in I think that it has rapidly grown, but as systems have, has, As systems have advanced and as security has advanced, I think that there's a lot less of the lone wolf type of, hacker or, threat actor [00:07:00] than there used to be.
But I do think if you look historically, the reference came from somewhere and it obviously exists for a reason. And I love it. I love the idea because it just shows, the evolution of the mindset that someone in a dark room by themselves was able to stare at a screen long enough to decipher all the ones and zeros to exploit something and garner that kind of attention.
Kayla: Yeah, I know. I think, That now, however, with the complexity of the systems, that trope, if you will, is very, it's very niche to the market of the hackers. Now it's, cyber cafes, teams of experts with diverse skill sets, including network security, the ethical hacking side, incident response, forensics, this is like the good guy side, and. It's more of a team. Cybersecurity is more of a team sport and that even goes to the other [00:08:00] side. Now you have as you mentioned before, nation states, where that in my mind is almost what you'd see portrayed in the movies about like sweatshops, where it's like a warehouse and just rows and rows of people with devices that's my, I don't know, of course, but that is what I think of when I started to think of nation states, I just think of rows of desks of people.
Day in and day out trying to overwhelm systems and find and exploit vulnerability. So I think the reality is has shifted a bit into this team sport approach to both ethical hacking and then also. Also the hacking, the hacktivists the disruptors. So I think it's changed.
It's evolved as things do. Are there still people one one man person teams, excuse me. That can do absolutely, but it's not that way necessarily anymore, all of the place.
Taylor: Yeah, you hear the term like. [00:09:00] Script kitties, robots, bots I even heard Ash kittens and one of the threat intelligence podcasts the other day.
And I was like, that's a
Kayla: new one for me. All right.
Taylor: I was like that's weird. But when you started talking about Rows and rows of people, attacking and trying to circumvent systems. I just I go immediately to the matrix where it shows all of the rows of agent Smith.
It's
Kayla: it's
Taylor: That's what we have. We have people repeating the same processes at scale against, large scale, Initiatives or, enterprises or countries even, against cyber warfare units within different military installations. They're a hundred percent.
And I do think that some of that's glorified or implied and, also, when you look at written word too they're always like these large scale efforts and attacks that are being taken out. And, [00:10:00] depending on what type of genre you read, it could be a single person at the end of the day that almost oh, the Wizard of Oz, right?
Oz was this big person, this big personality. And then you pull the curtain back and you're like, wow, this guy's,
Kayla: Feeble old man. Yeah. Yeah. I think, speaking of these teams that are sitting in rows of desks, rows of of hackers often fictional depictions will use Hackers, showcase hackers using like generic tools or custom built software with all these dramatic visuals.
And you got to give it to the graphic designers and the media specialists there like that do that. That's amazing. But the reality is a bit different. So can we talk a little bit about, that side of reality?
Taylor: Yeah, there's only so many times that I can watch a show and watch someone cat a file and be like, I'm in like, no, like you list of a file.
Good job. You read that file. Yeah, I think one of [00:11:00] My, my favorites again, is like back to the matrix where you see like the green screen with the falling letters and Yeah. It's almost like that's actually
Kayla: become very iconic, hasn't it? That, that it has, I've seen that as like phone cases, backgrounds on laptops and other like devices and stuff.
That is a very iconic visual.
Taylor: And it like people have also turned it into like cipher contests, like identifying characters within each row to formulate the password. I've actually even seen like that type of like green screen type of hacking implied even in video games. So fallout.
Replaying that because the show came out and like earlier, I would never think about, I'm like, Oh, I'm just searching for a password. And they actually built in like logic into the video game where you have so many password attempts before it locks you out of the system. It's okay, that makes sense.
Like you are going to get locked out. I [00:12:00] love that. But the way that you're able to manipulate the passwords using special characters to not use one of your attempts, but to get like a likeness back am I on the right track of the password? Like it gives you that sense of oh, this is exactly what it's like.
I'm going to get a problem of, all of these Letters and symbols and numbers. And now I have to decipher it. And it's not like that. Like it it's really there are some systems that are probably like that, but it's not like that. It's, Hey who am I profiling? What's the user, what's the user type?
Do I have the ability to do open source intelligence reconnaissance on this person to understand like their digital footprint, what are their likes? What are their dislikes? What's their wedding anniversary? If I can find that. I've gone as far Yeah. In like scenting for large organizations where I built out like an entire social media footprint off of somebody's [00:13:00] GitHub username that and it's things like that like lead to some of these dramatizations, right?
Oh, I can guess this person's password. Another one that like literally just triggered to me is Criminal Minds. The way that there's an episode where Reid is, Dr. Reid is in I believe it's a teenager's room. Him and Shemar Moore's character Agent Morgan. And they're like trying to get into this laptop and they're like looking around the room for clues.
Kayla: Yeah.
Taylor: So that that is actually a legitimate reconnaissance association of understanding the person and the persona of the user using the device. Sorry,
Kayla: you cannot mention Criminal Minds without Penelope. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm gonna get to Penelope. That's blasphemous if you don't mention that genius of a character, which is very well written.
And I think she
Taylor: is beautiful.
Kayla: And she I think she. It characterizes [00:14:00] what we're discussing now because she's, she does sit alone in her room and working on her many screens and types really fast. She's brilliant, but she's also very social. So they have the reality and the media portrayal done very well with her.
And she's not just creating, obviously, yes. Custom scripts are definitely a thing, but she's also using things like Nmap and Wireshark and Metasploit and she's really getting in there. And I think her, her, portrayal of the character of, I can't remember the actress's name and I apologize because I do love that show.
It is almost spot on and they do show the mundane and the spectacular because it can be pretty mundane doing those things.
Taylor: But yeah, she's talking about, looking through databases and doing joins of like physical characteristics and geo location. And again
Kayla: and it's not done very quickly all the time.
Sometimes she's I'll have to get back to you. This is going to take a bit. And it's not [00:15:00] like asking you receive like some of the other shows that are very guilty of that. Like the CSIs that are like, Oh, we've got this, you got this the warrant to do this. Go. And they're like, done.
Taylor: The counterpoint to that though, is it does show how quickly, and I'm going to bring up our favorite word, how quickly you're able to pivot based on very explicit information.
Yeah. Because if you think about it like we'll just use. Looking for a white male in his thirties that works in it within the state of North Carolina, it's it's going to take a minute. But then as like they develop and they continue to profile, it's like looking for a white male in his mid 30s that works in I.
T. He probably drives an SUV. He's a family man. He's active and fit because he's able to manipulate these crime scenes. He has [00:16:00] a higher level of education, so he's probably had at least some college or some, technical degree. And He also it has the ability to stay off the grid. It's okay
Kayla: yeah, that's it.
That's it. It goes from a wide down to a very specific person. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And
Taylor: as you get more explicit, just like in security, right? And this is like one of my favorite things. When you talk to a lot of people, oh yeah we saw this this IOC one time random connection to, this foreign country, we're going to block the entire country.
And it's odd, but okay. And then two weeks later, someone from marketing or another department's Hey this order system's down. Do we know why? And it's Oh it's hosted over here and they're like, interesting. So now you got to go back and reverse this very broad approach that you took to secure.
Because you thought that, it was the right approach whenever you should have been very [00:17:00] specific in certain instances.
Kayla: Oh yeah, absolutely. And that's where having a team of experts of very diverse backgrounds is now the preferred method because someone else could have said wait a second, incident response person goes and wait, instead of us blocking this outright, let's walk it back.
Let's follow the facts and trace. Where they've gone laterally and look at would probe where they've come from. Absolutely. Absolutely agree with you on that. So let's talk about the year 1995 for a sec. Let's go
Taylor: in
Kayla: the way back machine, which to me only like in my head is only about 10 years ago.
I, for some reason I can't actually believe that it's, yeah, let's not even talk about that. But in 1995, two movies came out, hackers and the net.
Taylor: Yes.
Kayla: So let's just discuss those two movies because the net really doesn't have The notoriety in in the cybersecurity [00:18:00] world as hackers does. So I'll let you pick which one to start with, but they're very different movies.
Taylor: I don't know, like the young boy in me who used to sit and beat on his Macintosh keyboard really wants to talk about hackers.
Kayla: Let's start with hackers. Highly That's a great movie. Yeah, okay, yep. Johnny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, they got married, by the way. I think they were married from that movie.
Taylor: Really?
Kayla: Yeah, I think he was her first husband, but anyway, that's off track. Very unrealistic portrayal of hacking. Exaggerated visuals of cyberspace and oversimplified complexities of everything. But it's stuck around. So what do you think gives it its staying power?
Taylor: I don't know. Maybe it was the year maybe, I, I don't know, but I firmly believe the hackers and the over exaggeration of that [00:19:00] set us on the trajectory over the next couple years where you saw, I also feel like when you start to think about it, It started the trend of incorporating technology into large movies.
Kayla: Yeah, because it was starting to become more mainstream, like the day to day people were using it. Oh my God. In 1995, I was in,
Taylor: I was six.
Kayla: I was in fifth grade. So we were starting to go to computer class and the Oregon trail. So yeah, I'm pretty sure that wasn't like 1995, 1996 time. So like it was, yeah, it was becoming more mainstream and like the Mavis beacon teaches typing.
I did that at some point as well. So that's when okay. So we'll was like, to your point, the year, it was a pivotal year. There was starting to be the shift of more computers in homes,
Taylor: More availability.
Kayla: And it was [00:20:00] hyped up in that because of that movie, I'll leave it there.
Taylor: Yeah, I won't say that 1995 started like the digital transformation era, but I do think that things started to be taken more seriously in 1995 because I even remember and 95, 96 because I've been on computers since I was a knee high to a grasshopper, as my grandmother would say.
Have no idea what it means.
Kayla: That's a new one to me. Okay.
Taylor: Oh, that, that's not one that's up in, in the Northeast. No. Yeah. Knee high to a grasshopper. So I was on computers from a very young age five, six, but I, around that time, like you even started to hear, like computers are taking over, they're going to start taking jobs.
And then, as you got closer to the end of 96 and 97 you started talking about Y2K. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:21:00] I remember that.
Kayla: Yep. Okay. That's
Taylor: but for me, 95, 96, 97, 98, like very, my very young years where technology started to bloom, you started to get The Game Boy Advances, the Sega Genesis, where, we're going from 8 bit characters and 16 bit characters to 2D modeling, to 3D modeling all of that, really if you think back to one movie where graphics and digitalization and technological transformation.
It's like everything goes back to like hackers.
Kayla: Yeah.
Taylor: Right.
Kayla: Yeah. And that's, I think that's a very fair thing to say, and it still holds up today when it comes to the action and like the sequences in the movie, like when they're when they're getting down to the actual hacking bits.
And the net in 1995 starred Sandra Bullock. And it long story short, like She assembles, her character assembles across some government [00:22:00] secrets, and then she effortlessly, all by herself, offers alters her entire identity and manipulates the government. databases for who she is and corporate databases without any significant hurdles whatsoever.
So the speed and the ease are highly exaggerated in particular with the, on the government side, even for 1995, come on, like that was ridiculous. Corporate, I could see there being holes back in the nineties in the corporate environment, because corporate security wasn't really a thing.
It was known, but it was not what it is today. And there were, there weren't all these massive firewalls and IDS and IPS and honeypots that were put out to distract people and capture them and audit logging and monitoring and things of that nature on the corporate side, the government side had their own controls and processes in place.
decades before. So I just, I feel like that one [00:23:00] kind of misses the mark a bit.
Taylor: It does. But for me, it also speaks to fluctuation, the oversight in systems at that time. Another reference for me, like on the financial side, if you really think about it, I think it was a Disney movie, but blank check.
Do you remember that movie? Kid gets his bike ran over by this super rich guy.
Kayla: What's that was blank check. I could have, yes, I remember that story. Yes. Okay.
Taylor: But so this kid cashes a million dollar check and it like, to your point, right? Like you start thinking about like regulatory processes, checks and balances, audit logging, right?
Why is this 10 year old kid cashing a million dollar check and like for his a hundred dollar bike or whatever it was? So to your point, like we, we would assume that, government compliance, security policies, things like that existed, and it would have trickled down to, corporate entities, financial systems, things like [00:24:00] that, but the, while, these can be inaccurate depictions, they do speak to the larger problem set of, Sometimes sharing information is not done as rapidly as it should be.
And it does lead to unintended access or to manipulation of, databases and the altering of identity. I remember being in high school, like the big joke was who's going to hack the principal and change the grades. It happened.
Kayla: Oh, really? Oh,
Taylor: it definitely happened. It was not me. Mainly cause I didn't care enough.
I was already going to the Marine Corps. I was like, pass me or fail me. I don't care. I leave. Our May day.
Kayla: That's funny.
Taylor: But yeah, I'm
Kayla: sorry. I have to ask. Was that like a senior prank or was that cause like art, like senior pranks, like we didn't do anything that malicious. And then the other day I watched a senior prank where a high school, they I don't know where, but they hired a bagpiper to follow their principal around for the day.
I think that's brilliant. That's a, that's, that is a non criminal [00:25:00] senior prank. If you were supposed to do a senior prank doing that. And.
Taylor: I don't know if it was I don't know if it was senior prank or what, but yeah, I just remember it. I think my favorite senior prank though, there used to be, I think the show was on MTV but I saw it and they released four chickens into the high school and they numbered them one, two, three,
Kayla: Oh, that's great.
Taylor: So everyone was apparently running around the school looking for chicken number three and couldn't find them. That again, that's a social engineering attack.
Kayla: Yeah.
Taylor: If you want to bring it back to security you put out a deceptive system. Knowing that people are going to count the numbers on the chickens.
Yeah. And you socially engineered them into wasting the school day looking for chicken number three.
Kayla: That's brilliant. I love that. That's so funny. And then in our last few minutes here, let's talk a [00:26:00] little bit about some books. Now you are far more versed on this than I am. I will. admit, the things I read are like Harvard Business Review and MIT books.
I am not, I don't have the attention span, I think, to get through some of these books. So one of the books you mentioned to me, and it is on my list to read, is Digital Fortress. Can you talk a little bit about that one?
Taylor: Yeah, so Digital Fortress one of my all time favorite books, it's by Dan Brown. Everyone knows Dan Brown because of
Kayla: Da
Taylor: Vinci code.
I've got to look up Oh, Inferno. It's actually at the very top of my my shelves here is actually like my Dan Brown collection. Digital fortress, deception point, angels and demons, lost symbol, Inferno, Da Vinci code, like all of those. Digital fortress is. A wonderful book. It talks, it has a heavy play into encryption and surveillance.
And then as you like, start to [00:27:00] evolve within the story. There, you start to question the efficacy of privacy and security, right? And it's something I feel like you and I have talked about in the past, probably around AI models and other things, right? But the idea of an NSA owned system having the ability to messages, encrypt messages surveil, remote systems, remote people.
It really just it plays into that. And it's a wonderful story of like understanding, at what point is too much oversight in a breach of privacy compared to What's the appropriate level of security? All time book. Love it.
Kayla: Okay. All right. I'll read it. It is on my list. If there's like an audible book, I'll look for that
Taylor: I
Kayla: don't
Taylor: know that I would do I've thought about when [00:28:00] I drive
Kayla: into the office, that's really what I listened to stuff.
Taylor: I really thought about reading and then I hear my voice and I'm like, man, maybe not. But then I get close to the mic and I think maybe I could do this. So what about,
Kayla: The book, the
Taylor: three
body problem,
Kayla: which has been turned into a show again, haven't watched it.
So if you've read the book, if you've watched the show, like what are your thoughts there on that one?
Taylor: So I actually, I read this book in a cyber security club in a cyber security book club and the three body problem while there are like strategic cyber security principles that like you could call the idea of technology and virtual reality and the philosophy in which like, That [00:29:00] integrates into human society and the way that you are solving problems or you are, predicting future problems like the philosophical themes there are very strong and you're able to directly, Correlate those themes back to the use of technology and virtual reality for, understanding past problems, present problems, and future problems.
But also as you start to think about that, like the way that those data points could be collected and used for both good and bad. I don't want to draw too much just because of like the amount of attention that the three body problem is garnering right now. I don't want to, ruin the story for anyone or
Kayla: but
Taylor: that is I've only watched one episode, but I've read the book three different times now.
It's actually a series. I need to finish this series, but I keep going back to that book. And another book called Cryptonomicon. [00:30:00] Cryptonomicon is a book about historical cryptography and modern cybersecurity and so like the blending of that and the way that I think about growing my teams.
I, I bring all this back to, like the way that I want to grow my career, the way that I want to evolutionize and revolution, like training and implementation of cybersecurity practices and policies. Like those two books are very good reference points for me and understanding like philosophical impacts, ethical impacts the blending of past learnings against current technologies and the way that.
I want to be able to have predictors of success in the future.
Kayla: Yeah. And, for me, when I think about the books that I've read, which are not like the fiction, fictional books the level of technical detail varies widely, which I'm assuming is going to be the same for the fictional books that, it really depends [00:31:00] on, some authors delve really deeply into technical aspects of cybersecurity while others, you just graze the surface and go with what they know where in reality like the technical accuracy in books like for The books that I read, at least, they can be high, but like the dramatic side, the elements aren't often as exaggerated as they are in some of the books, very much like media with TV and and movies books, I think do a better job of, focusing on motivations and backgrounds, offering the psychological insights.
Of course, yes, some shows do it as well, more for their main characters, like the Penelope Garcia's of the world didn't like criminal minds where, you know, her background versus maybe the criminal that's in that one episode where you don't go into those things. Where to your point earlier that you made, Real world cybersecurity involves OSINT.
It involves understanding the psychology of what you're trying [00:32:00] to do. Social engineering and understanding a company and the backgrounds of people. of the architecture. So it's very different in that aspect. And I feel like the real world practices of like teamwork and collaboration, continuous monitoring, prevention, laws and regulations, incidents response and recovery, like that stuff does not get really covered at all in books or media.
Where that I think that's a really big piece of cyber security Practitioning that's even a word that's missing, you know we're not talking about those practitioners that are doing those things that are on the offensive from a defensive position and That I think it's a little unfortunate that you don't really get to see it
Taylor: the other thing that I mean to your point the other thing that I think that needs to be more widely shown.
And it's implied really a lot in like shows and movies, but it's not discussed, [00:33:00] is getting things wrong.
Kayla: Yeah, that's a really good point.
Taylor: And the impact of getting it wrong.
Kayla: Yeah. Let's that's one of the things that we've talked about a lot. I was a panelist a few weeks ago at RSA on a couple of panels.
And I also was an earned speaker session talking about cybersecurity burnout. And there is no real mechanism for awarding or rewarding people for getting it right in our field. Yay, we weren't hacked today or this month or this quarter, or we didn't have an incident because of whatever. But the one time that something is done wrong, it could be game changer, it could be an extinction event.
So I think that's a really good point that they don't cover enough of that flip side of, what's going on. And then the burnout and in the toll that it takes on you from that's actually an extremely good point. And I can't believe that I didn't make it like earlier that it didn't come to my head.
So thank you for that, because I think [00:34:00] that's really important to emphasize and highlight. So I think, my synopsis from this conversation is that like understanding the differences between what you're seeing in books, TV, Movies, maybe even, online on some of the social media platforms, can help you set your expectations.
If you're thinking about moving into cyber security career, or if you're already here and you're wondering what's happening on the other side, like of my team or my peers. And it does highlight, some of the importance of doing your homework and having a comprehensive and collaborative approach to what's actually happening in the real world.
Fiction and media are just that they're not, and that goes across for everything. There's nothing out there on TV. That's a 100 percent accurate depiction of what's going on. Even the news can get it wrong, right? If you only see a portion of a clip of something on the news, it doesn't actually represent what's happening in real time.
So you just have to remember that. And movies and TV [00:35:00] shows and books are entertainment.
Taylor: They are they a hundred percent. They are entertainment. Not, and what what I'll say is I know that we're getting towards the end is not everyone is Superman and not everyone is super hackerman either.
So also whenever you talk about getting people into the industry, It's finding the right mentor as well to temper expectations and execution that way there is someone there to talk to you about failure about getting it right because I am I was super hesitant in the past, but. I believe like all of your mentorship should come from, your direct line leadership and within your company.
I think that breeds a siloed thought processing and it, it de intimates or, I don't know if the end minutes is the [00:36:00] right word but it creates a lack of intimacy and the ability to have diversity of thought. Absolutely.
Kayla: Yep.
My mentor is
not in my company.
Taylor: Yeah. I'm still on the search for a mentor.
But I'm also in this very weird spot of my career of now I need to define am I going to stay in the leadership path? Am I going to stay, And the technical leadership path, am I going to go, a completely different route? So that that's where I'm at right now. So but I do have like career mentors and people I look up to like you and Adriana, who's been a guest on here and Jill and several other people.
Jill was a guest
Kayla: too. Jill did our ESG episode. That's right. Yes,
Taylor: she was. And there are other people out there for sure. But those people, if you talk to all of those people that we've mentioned, they have a grounding and a realization that there is burnout, that there, there is, inflated expectations or, ulterior motives at times [00:37:00] to get things right or get things wrong.
So yeah, use media for what media is for. And like you said, that's entertainment. But there are. There are good lessons learned and everything that you read and everything that you see. But just managing that appropriately is probably my hot take for the day.
Kayla: Absolutely agree with you on that one.
I'm always a proponent of mentorship, so you'll never hear me say otherwise. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening today. And we will be back with a new episode soon. Thank you.
Taylor: Thank you.