IT Brew Movie Club: ‘The Net’ (1995)

If you were a systems analyst in 1995, you brought two towels to the beach: one for you and one for your giant laptop.

That’s what an IT pro’s day off looks like in the dial-up-era movie The Net.

The thriller begins with hacker and loner Angela Bennett (played by Sandra Bullock) going on a rare vacation and meeting a suave stranger—someone who has also brought his tech gear to the beach. He even, she learns, enjoys a Gibson cocktail—her favorite. Too good to be true? Or is this meet-cute actually a meet-phish?

Since this is a thriller, of course it’s the latter: the man on the beach is none other than villainous, just-check-his-last-name Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam).

Devlin works for the Praetorians, a group that exploits vulnerabilities in airports, Wall Street, and other critical environments. These threat actors also might be connected to Gregg Microsystems, a company that conveniently offers the high-access security solution. When Bennett identifies a backdoor to the firm’s “Gatekeeper” security system, Devlin and his group attempt to leverage that information from her by manipulating her private records, replacing her digital identity with a criminal’s.

While much of the technology has advanced since the movie’s premiere—most notably online pizza delivery—some IT threats never change. Juan Orlandini, CTO for North America at solutions integrator Insight, shared some lines that stuck out, and which offer some lessons for tech pros decades later.

“The beauty of the Gatekeeper system is that we can get in and out of the FBI like it’s the public library.”

Devlin delivers this line in the movie’s finale. There’s a ring of contemporary truth to it: today’s tools give threat actors the ability to enter a system like they were sneaking through an open window.

Cyber adversaries have shown their willingness to disrupt infrastructure—most recently water facilities—via backdoors intentional or unintentional. Sophisticated large language models like Anthopic’s Claude Mythos Preview are finding vulnerabilities at higher rates than ever; that’s great if those capabilities end up in the hands of the Angela Bennetts of the world and catastrophic in the hands of Jack Devlins.

“If these state actors now have access to these frontier-style models that [have] actual Mythos-level capabilities, nothing prevents them from being able to penetrate very sensitive environments and then get into very secure content, or destroy infrastructure…who knows?” Orlandini told us.

“It’s like this little electronic shadow on each and everyone of us, just begging for someone to screw with…”

Our electronic shadows have only expanded since The Net’s premiere, given the prevalence of system logs and social media. An IT pro has the tough job of reducing that footprint, including by restricting features at the office like “shadow” AI tools or personal email.

“IT is generally seen as the department of ‘no,’” Orlandini said. “What they’re trying to do is actually prevent that shadow from having a bigger impact than it should.”

Today’s threat actors, according to Orlandini, tailor phishing messages with details discovered through session cookies, online profiles, or public interviews. “As you’re browsing the internet, you’re leaving this trail,” he said. (A pen tester once shared with IT Brew how they used a photo of an exec’s brand new Corvette against them.)

“Sorry, you don’t understand. l’m Angela Bennett. l’m standing right here.”

While today’s victims may not have to deal with a complete erasure of their digital identity, adversaries in 2026 can still use emerging technologies to disrupt someone’s life. Orlandini noted reports of Flock cameras making errors resulting in innocent drivers being pulled over; a hacker with the wherewithal and the tools could mess with someone’s presumed identity.

“You might not be able to do a complete wipeout of someone’s digital self, but I do know that you can do a good enough job that it makes your life a nightmare,” he said.

- “We’re sitting on the most perfect beach in the world...and all we can think about is…”

- “…Where can l hook up my modem?”

To some degree, this line demonstrates the comedy of 1995’s cutting-edge technology—the modem as an everyday essential. Orlandini remembers watching the movie then and being impressed by the 640x480 resolution of one of the beach laptops (“That was state-of-the-art. Man, I wanted that laptop so bad back then”) and even a character’s cell phone, which plugged into his car. (“That guy must be rich,” Orlandini also remembered thinking at the time.)

The quotation plays into the overall theme of the movie: it’s lonely being a hacker—you’re on a beautiful beach, but you’re also by yourself, and you’re thinking about modems. Bennett does seek out friendship in chat rooms, but those digital interactions were still nascent in 1995.

Thirty years later, Orlandini sees today’s digital connections and friendships as a way of addressing isolation—or what might look like isolation—in a job that involves interfacing with computers: “It might seem lonely on the outside, but it’s actually very rich on the inside.”

For more IT Brew movie club, check out our dives into Hackers, Sneakers, Blackhat, Skyfall, The Matrix, Jurassic Park, WarGames, and Blade Runner.