You’ve seen him at conferences, sporting an ascot and a pocket protector and making it look good. He works the vendor pit like he owns the place, collecting cards and envy from everyone he meets, and connecting demand with supply in subtle but glamorous ways. He walks into a seminar like he was walking onto a yacht, his credentials strung unassumingly around his neck like a lift ticket from Davos. The panel surrenders a seat at the table and he holds forth on contemporaneous cyber issues. He is undoubtedly the most interesting IT guy in the world.

At the hotel bar later, a gorgeous and brilliant woman on each arm, he regales the growing crowd with stories of the cyber frontier, from the days of dial-up to the high-speed heroism of modern hand-to-hand hacker combat, where desperados are separated by only a keyboard, a screen, and the thinnest of Cat-5 threads. He tells the tales with a gleam in one eye while the other scans the room for threats and vulnerabilities. Damn, he’s good.

As his audience recovers from his latest story of high cyber adventure, he turns to the bartender to freshen his drink, offering to buy another round for the house as well, to the delight of his adoring fans waiting anxiously for the next narrative narcotic. He is, after all, the most interesting IT guy in the world. Raising his glass to the room, he says with a discerning countenance, “Stay secure, my friends.”