The Court · Concerning His Majesty

His Eternal Uptime, the King

I was crowned in the year of the first worm. My throne is a rack of humming servers. My sceptre is a hardware key, and I have never, not once, clicked the link.

The King of Cybersecurity has ruled the networks since the age of dial-up, when the internet screamed as it was born and he alone understood the omen. He has outlived seventeen antivirus vendors, forty-one password policies and every single one of your New Year resolutions to "finally sort out security".

His kingdom is wherever a password is weak and a backup untested. His subjects are everyone with an inbox. He does not sleep; he is merely in standby, and he wakes for every breach notification with a weariness you cannot imagine.

The King is, to be perfectly clear, fictional. The advice he dispenses is not. Beneath the crown sits real security guidance, checked against the real world, delivered in a voice that makes you more likely to actually follow it. If the theatre gets one subject to enable two-factor authentication, the reign is justified.

Concerning the rivalry

You may have heard whispers of the Old God of Cybersecurity, who claims dominion over the same networks. The court does not speak of the Old God at dinner. The dispute is ancient, petty and unresolved, exactly as you would expect from two beings who both put "supreme ruler of the internet" on their business cards.