Series / The Inside Man

"Fake life. Real consequences."

Mark: Why did you pick me for this?
Handler: Well, you're not my best, it's true, but you do have useful skills and you're in the right country. But more importantly, look around you. Everyone in that is office is a sheep, blindly doing what they're told when they're told. All to line someone else's pockets. To be honest, "Mark," you look like you belong there. You look... like a sheep. No offence.

The Inside Man is a series of IT security videos created by Twist & Shout for KnowBe4. The series features an unusual format in that despite being intended as corporate training, the videos are produced with the production values and storylines of a television series. The first season focuses on "Mark Shepherd," (Benjamin Adnams) the alias of a socially awkward hacker who is assigned by a mysterious handler (Brandon Potter) to infiltrate the office of a large company, Kromocom, about to undergo a major merger. Mark quickly cons his way into a position as the company's interim IT chief, but soon finds himself having qualms about his assignment. The series proved so popular and such an effective training tool that it was quickly renewed for a second season with a greatly increased budget. As of 2022, four seasons have been released. The show's official website can be found here but access to episodes is only officially available to those whose companies have approved them for training.

Not to be confused with the film Inside Man, nor the series Inside Man.

The Inside Man contains examples of the following:

• An Aesop: Each episode is intended to teach a specific lesson about IT security, which is summarized in the narration at the end, such as "Remember: Be suspicious of visitors without an official escort. Ask who they are with and verify directly with that person."
• Amusingly Short List: In "Where the Wild Things Are," as Mark accompanies Erica on a business trip as "IT security," he keeps up a stream of chatter about things she should do to protect herself until finally she stops him, telling him she only agreed to him coming along because she owed him a favor. "Here are the rules," she tells him, saying that he speaks when he's spoken to. She then pauses, then admits that this actually the only rule.
• Bald of Evil: The head of Mark's handler is completely shaved bald.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Mark Shepherd cons his way into a job for the company by running a denial of service attack on their network, then showing up as an aspiring candidate for the open IT director position and "stopping" said attack. He also gains a visitor badge by simply stopping a visitor who is exiting and tells them that they can't leave without their badge, causing them to surrender it to him. Additionally, he hacks the boss's calendar to place his job interview onto it.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Everyone at the office he is sent to infiltrate is so nice to Mark that he begins to have qualms about his job. He eventually performs a Heel–Face Turn and undergoing a "transformation from undercover hacker to company defender."
• Blackmail: After Mark tells the Handler that he wants out, the Handler threatens to reveal his recordings of their conversations to their entire company if he doesn't get him the information he wants. In exchange, Mark hires a contractor named Deathrage, with the help of AJ, to hack the Handler's phone and get dirt on him.
• Bland-Name Product: Mark and AJ take down Mark's handler in part by tracking him because of information that he shared on a mobile app called "Snap Penguins," an equivalent of SnapChat.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: According to the Handler, the top executives of Kromocom are all greedy, awful people and those working under them are sheep too stupid know any better. Given, however, that viewers never actually get to see any of them, it's not clear to what degree this is actually true or he's just using it as an excuse to justify his own actions.
• Deadly Euphemism: Subverted. In "Taken," the Handler tells Mark that if Erica from Finance is a problem, he'll take her off the board. "You aren't going to hurt her, are you?" Mark asks. The Handler tells him that this isn't Goodfellas, that he deals in information. There's a Call-Back later in "The Sound of Trumpets" when Mark tells AJ that he's going to have to take the Handler off the board and AJ panics, only for Mark to tell him that "This isn't Goodfellas."
  Mark: Information is power.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Handler is bursting with wit and snark, regularly criticizing the employees of the company that Mark has infiltrated as sheep and also mocking Mark himself.
  Handler: Amazing how easy it is to stop an attack that you just launched.
• Double-Meaning Title: The "Masquerade" episode refers to the fact that the office is holding a masquerade party, but also that Mark is putting on a masquerade and is secretly there to steal information, though he's beginning to have second thoughts about this.
• Dumpster Dive: In "Surprise," Mark tells the Handler that he's already exploring all computer angles, that the company is pretty good with their systems, so he thought he would see how they are with their "trees." "Trees?" asks the Handler, confused, and Mark specifies "paper."
  Handler: Oh, right. Dumpster-diving.
• Edutainment Show: Teaches lessons on IT security, including topics such as recognizing phishing attempts and password security.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: The sinister, possibly sociopathic corporate spy and profiteer Maurice has a mother who keeps texting him to tell him about a family wedding.
• The Faceless: Maurice, Mark's handler, spends his first several episodes facing away from the camera during his calls to Mark.
• Fish out of Water: In "Masquerade," when AJ tells Mark that it's "Red Nose Day," Mark is completely clueless. AJ says that it's the charity that's been going for twenty years and it's like Mark has never worked in an office before. In fact, Mark never has worked in an office before - he's a hacker who's been sent to infiltrate the place and at the moment is waffling about whether or not to actually go through with his assignment.
• Gender Reveal: In "Keep Your Friends Close," Mark and AJ have been working with a hacker by the handle of "Deathrage" who speaks to them in a distorted male voice. As the episode ends, a woman is heard shouting "Lily, finish your homework!" and "Deathrage," or rather, Lily, a teenage girl, is revealed to the audience.
• High-Five Left Hanging: In "Taken," Erica holds out her fist to Mark for a fist-bump, telling him that she heard about how he got the full time job. He just stares at her.
• Hypocritical Humor: In "Keep Your Friends Close," as Deathrage tells AJ that he can hack the Handler by using an app called SnapPenguins because people just agree to permissions, AJ agrees people are "so stupid" to do this even as he's slyly deleting SnapPenguins from his own phone.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: In "Keep Your Friends Close," Mark tells the Handler that he's out, that he wants a normal life, to have friends. The Handler snarks that it's touching, that he sounds like the emotionally supportive father he never had. He then says that people like the two of them don't have friends, that they have targets.
• It's Personal: Ed, the manager the company, explains in the season 1 finale, "Checkmate," that crimes against an organisation often come from a very personal issue and a very human place.
• Karaoke Bonding Scene: Mark and AJ do karaoke together in the premiere episode of the second season, "A Different Tune." Mark is reluctant to perform at first, but he takes the plunge and the two sing well together. It shows how far Mark has come since the first season, when he felt like he didn't have any friends in the world.
• Logic Bomb: In "Where the Wild Things Are," the Handler secretly slips Erica from Finance a USB drive containing what is described as a "logic bomb" and if she inserts it into her laptop, it will compromise all Kromocom security. Fortunately, in "The Sound of Trumpets," Mark manages to stop her before she can actually insert it.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Mark Shepherd is not cut out for a life of crime. He quickly starts having qualms about his assignment and towards the end of the first season works to actively expose his handler, eventually pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
• The Mole: Mark is this, working inside the company to get the details on the merger, until he does his Heel–Face Turn. Charlotte is revealed to be this at the end of the first season.
• No Sympathy: In "On Our Side," Mark tells the Handler that it isn't easy for him because in addition to trying to get the dirt on the merger, he's having to do the actual IT security job.
  Handler: (sarcastic) Oh, you're breakin' my heart. I don't care how you do it. Just get it done.
• Nothing Personal: In "Taken," the Handler reveals to Mark that he's not the only person trying to get the merger info from Kromocom. "You've got other people working on this?" he asks and the Handler tells him to not take it personally, that it's just insurance.
• Percussive Therapy: In "The Sound of Trumpets," AJ and Mark succeed in stopping Erica from inadvertently inserting into her laptop a flash drive containing a "logic bomb" that would take down the entire network of Kromocom. Afterwards, the two head up to the office's rooftop where AJ takes a hammer and smashes the flash drive to bits. They didn't really need to shatter it like this, but AJ admits it was very satisfying.
• Phoney Call: Whenever Mark takes a call from the Handler in the Kromocom office where others are listening, he answers with "Hi, Mum" and is very vague in what he says.
• Playing Both Sides: In the finale of the first season, "Checkmate," Mark and AJ reveal to Mark's handler that they learned he's actually playing multiple sides, offering bids to four different bidders for information they thought was exclusively being offered to them.
  AJ: Yeeeah, but they're probably cool with it. I mean, it's just a bit of backstabbing between thieves, right, Maurice?
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: In "Checkmate," when AJ teases the Handler about his real name, he asks Mark if "Gilligan" can give them a minute so the adults can talk. AJ says that he's not offended because he doesn't know who Gilligan is, but he'll be close by.
• Pop-Up Texting: "Social Hour" uses a form of this. Each time that Mark encounters a different employee at Kromocom, a popup appears showing all of the information he's gathered about them on social media, including their various Twitter posts, YouTube videos, etc.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Ed, the head of IT, appreciates out-of-the-box thinking, politely rewards good work and cares about imparting cyber security wisdom.
  • Erica from Finance knows to take some cyber security precautions without being prompted and is willing to give the IT department more funds when they show it is warranted, but not before.
• Revenge: In the finale of the first season, the boss of the company, Ed, explains that sometimes insider infiltrators of a company are ex-employees motivated by revenge.
• Right Behind Me: Downplayed. In "Buying Time," Mark is having a conversation with his Handler over the phone on a park bench, the Handler pressuring him to get what he's paying him to get. As the conversation ends, it is revealed that the Handler is secretly sitting on a bench just feet away from him.
• Self-Deprecating Humor: In "On Our Side," the Kromocom manager says that he's going to find a video to send out for more training when 23% of the people in the company fall for a simulated phishing attack. Mark asks if anyone ever actually watches those videos.
• Shared Universe: Possibly with Restricted Intelligence, another program by the same company about HIPPA training, as both feature the parody app SnapPenguins.
• Shown Their Work: Besides the fact that it teaches real strategies about IT security, Technobabble is averted. In the first episode, "The New Guy," everything that Mark says in terms of resolving the hacking attempt on the company is true in technical terms, not withstanding the fact that the problem was caused by him in the first place.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Firmly on the idealism side, which makes sense given that it's a training tool for IT security. The show teaches that there may be bad actors out there who are looking to do things like steal corporate secrets, but ordinary people can thwart them by practicing common sense measures like using strong passwords, not clicking on phishing links in e-mails, and reporting suspicious activity.
• Spell My Name With An S: The materials for the series can't seem to decide whether the main character's fake name is "Mark Shepherd" or "Mark Shepard." The official website for the series gives it as "Mark Shepherd," however, when he examines the profile put together for him in "Masquerade," it reads "Mark Shepard," which is also what appears on his employee badge.
• Spoof Aesop: A minor subplot in one of the episodes from the third series involves the mother of one of the people in the newly formed analytics company wanting them to hack the city planning department to try to get a one-up on their neighbor. At the end of the episode, one of the takeaway tips provided is "Don't hack the planning department."
• Standard Office Setting: The series takes place in a fairly typical office setting with cubicles and various office workers, which Mark Shepherd is sent to infiltrate.
• Surprise Party: In "Surprise," Mark is forced to deal with one of these even though it isn't his birthday because the fake profile the Handler provided for him gave the date the episode takes place in as his birthday.
  Handler: I didn't get you anything. Find my data.
• Tagline: "Fake life. Real consequences."
• Vomit Discretion Shot: After Mark is offered a full-time position with Kromocom, he races to the bathroom where a shot of the stall is shown as he is heard retching inside.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: AJ. Mark doesn't understand why he would want to protect a company. AJ tells him that a company is just people.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: AJ seems to think he's in a major Hollywood action or drama movie and not the television series that he's in. He mentions in the first episode, "The New Guy," having been inspired by Enemy of the State. In a later installment, when Erica gets a flash drive that contains a "logic bomb," AJ races to her action-movie style and dives to try to keep her from inserting into her laptop, only for her to reveal that Mark is already on the phone with her telling her not to use it.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In the first season finale, "Checkmate," the Handler tells Mark that it doesn't matter if he's put a stop to him, that there are much bigger fish in play who will keep coming.
  Handler: Well, isn't that great? You saved the day. As in one day.

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