With movie premieres and celebrity guests, the cybersecurity industry's bringing a touch of Hollywood to Black Hat this week.

Semperis will premiere Midnight in the War Room, a feature-length documentary about the human side of cyberwar. The film features Chris Inglis, the first U.S. National Cyber Director; former CISA director Jen Easterly; BBC cyber correspondent Joe Tidy; General (Ret.) David Petraeus; and more than 50 other contributors.

OPSWAT’s Into the Breach took a different route to the screen. OPSWAT commissioned the series and brought in Cyber King Productions to make it. The director, Berry Blanton, is also OPSWAT's VP of creative and brand. Hosted by MythBusters' Kari Byron, the first episode premieres August 8 for free on YouTube after an advance screening tour spanning more than 100 locations, plus a slot in some airlines' in-flight entertainment.

Security vendors have been making films for a decade

Cybersecurity companies seem like unlikely producers of cinematic entertainment, but they’ve been at it for years. HP launched The Wolf, starring Christian Slater, through HP Studios in 2017. Kaspersky built Tomorrow Unlocked into a documentary platform, including a hacker series made with Euronews. And in 2022, security vendor Conceal premiered Ransom at Black Hat.

Even though the format has been around for a while, these companies are using film to solve a communications problem in ways that a product demo or research report can't. The underlying subjects are technical, abstract, and emotionally remote. A film makes them the story.

  • OPSWAT’s show explains the product. Episode one, "Breaking the Firewall," debunks the assumption that firewalls alone can protect critical infrastructure, and arrives at data diodes, which OPSWAT sells.
  • Semperis’ product almost disappears. Midnight in the War Room is about cyberwar, the people defending against it, and the psychological cost of the work. The company borrows credibility from the people it puts on screen.

What PR teams should take from this

Turn the film into a measurable event. Both companies show the value of linking a film to a real-world experience. OPSWAT built a screening program spanning more than 100 locations, while Semperis went for a high-profile flagship event with an officially sponsored premiere at Black Hat. Both approaches are highly measurable, yielding registration lists, VIP attendee engagement, and direct lead generation. 

Create a date-driven news hook. A premiere acts as a built-in anchor for your media strategy. Semperis earned coverage in January for an August screening, again in July, and again this week. That’s three news cycles from one asset, much more than you could hope to get from a white paper.

Don't gate it. OPSWAT is releasing the series for free on YouTube to remove any barriers. That instinct pays off twice. A threat report behind a form limits how much of its substance reaches crawlers and the models your buyers increasingly ask for recommendations. Screening pages, wire releases, and coverage are all open, and Semperis' film is discoverable through blackhat.com.

Turn advertising into stories. As with any campaign, we’ll be watching the ROI closely, since nobody has published data on this. It also helps that putting respected journalists, researchers, former government officials, practitioners, and even former attackers in your production turns it from an advertisement into a story.

For now, the red carpet is out. We'll be at the screenings.