A four-level arcade simulation that puts every player in the CISO's chair during a live ransomware incident, proves the resilience story by making them live it, and captures a qualified conversation for the booth team. This document maps the full experience, the front-end players see and the back-end that runs it.
Operation: Unbreakable is one continuous simulation built on Absolute's four-pillar resilience story. The player is the CISO of an enterprise mid-attack. They do not stop the attack by hand, because the platform does that autonomously, embedded in firmware before the OS loads. Their job is the judgment a leader still owns, while Absolute has their back. By the end they have lived the message, and the booth has a call sign, an email, and a warm handoff.
Four levels, one narrative, built for the security specialist. The 8-bit arcade feel keeps it fun while the content stays serious enough to filter for real practitioners.
The demo shows the experience players touch. Behind it sits the engine: capture, privacy, admin analytics, and the public leaderboard. This plan covers both.
Call sign and email only, badge scanned separately, all attendee data auto-purged after the show. Built for a privacy-paranoid audience, not against it.
The live demo at operationunbreakable.exhibithappy.design is the working front-end. Play it alongside this document. Everything in the sections that follow either appears in that demo today or is mapped here as the next build phase.
The demo can show you the felt experience, but it cannot show the engine underneath. The engine is where your real questions live: your data, the privacy posture, the admin control, the reuse across shows. So everything in this plan sits under one of two headers. You always know which half you are looking at.
Everything the player touches at the booth. The attract screen, the token start, the four levels, the scoring, the end screen. This is what the live demo shows, and what draws the crowd and teaches the story.
Everything that makes it run and makes it safe. Data capture and auto-purge, the admin command center, the public leaderboard with its countdown, and the configuration that lets one build run multiple shows.
This is the path every player walks, and it maps directly onto the live demo. A player goes from attract screen to a warm conversation with the booth team in four to five minutes.
This repetition is deliberate. It is what makes four levels feel like one arcade cabinet, and it is how the run stays inside the four to five minute window.
You cannot lose the attack. Absolute neutralizes and recovers it every time, because that is the product truth. The stakes live in the clock, the quality of your decisions, and one honest beat: if you stumble, the screen tells you so, then reminds you that because you run Absolute, you had your back anyway. The leaderboard, not a locked door, is what creates the competition.
Each level is one pillar of Absolute's resilience story, made playable. Players see mission titles, never the pillar names. Every level features real products so the story is deliberate, not decoration.
The specific signals, decisions, and incident timings are built as editable values, ready to drop in the approved answers and official numbers from your product marketing team. They can be updated without rebuilding the game, which is also what lets the same build run again at Fal.Con.
The part the demo cannot show you. Four systems run behind the experience, and together they are what make Operation: Unbreakable a real platform rather than a one-off game.
Call sign and email captured in-game. Real contact data comes from the separate badge scan and never touches the leaderboard. All attendee data auto-purges after the event. Detailed in the Privacy section.
Not a lead-export tool, because there is no follow-up. A live analytics view: games played, score distribution, throughput per hour, and email-send confirmations. Plus timer and difficulty control.
A one-page live leaderboard players reach through a button in their score email, since QR codes are not permitted at Black Hat. It carries a live countdown to the end-of-day prize moment, pulling top players back with no push spam.
Show name, email copy, the link the end screen points to, the timers, and the level content are all admin-configurable. One build runs Black Hat, then Fal.Con with new messaging, then beyond.
Front-end and back-end together, and how they connect. Gameplay feeds capture. Capture feeds the booth leaderboard screen and the public page. Everything feeds the admin analytics. This is the whole plan in one view.
This audience is the most privacy-aware on the show floor. So the data posture is built to be shown off, not buried. Four promises, enforced in the build.
The leaderboard shows the player's chosen call sign. Never a real name, never a company. The competition is public, the identity is not.
The game captures only what it needs to send a score and a leaderboard link. Real contact data comes from the badge scan, handled by your stack.
All attendee data auto-deletes on a set window after the event. The retention period is a single configurable setting, with an automated purge job.
Captured data is for the gameplay experience only, not sales follow-up. The admin back end has no lead-export, by design, because there is none.
The demo in front of you is Phase 1. The back-end systems are mapped and architected, and come next once the design is approved and the content lands.
To move from the working demo to the show-ready build, these items come from the Absolute team.
| Item | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Approved level content: signals, decisions, and the correct or higher-value answers | Camila / Product Marketing | Needed |
| Official incident timings and recovery logic | Product Marketing | Needed |
| Capture method confirmation (email is the working default) | Danielle | Needed |
| Data retention window and privacy wording | Danielle / Legal | Needed |
| Prize structure and prize-wall list | Danielle | Needed |
| Brand vector assets and background art direction | Minty / Trilogy | Needed |
| Badge-scan data interface or event-system access | Absolute | Needed |
| Progression model sign-off (always advance, leaderboard as stakes) | Danielle / Minty | Needed |
A clear accounting of what Steelhead delivers and what the Absolute team provides.
| # | Deliverable | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Operation: Unbreakable game development, all four levels | In progress |
| 2 | 8-bit UI and UX design, Absolute branded | In progress |
| 3 | Booth leaderboard display and public mobile leaderboard page | Pending |
| 4 | Privacy-first capture flow with badge-scan integration | Pending |
| 5 | Admin command center: analytics, timers, retention, per-show config | Pending |
| 6 | Modular multi-show configuration for Black Hat and Fal.Con | Pending |
| 7 | On-site setup documentation and remote support during the event | Pending |
| # | Item | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Approved level content and official timings | From Camila and product marketing |
| 2 | Brand vector assets and background art direction | Minty and Trilogy |
| 3 | Badge-scan data interface or event-system access | For the separate real-data capture |
| 4 | Prize structure and on-site staff for prizes | Prize wall and end-of-day raffle |
| 5 | Capture method and data-retention policy confirmation | Email default, retention window |
Key milestones from demo review through deployment to the show floor.
| Milestone | Target |
|---|---|
| Demo reviewed and experience plan approved | 6/30/2026 |
| Approved level content and timings received | TBD |
| Back-end build: admin, capture, public page | TBD |
| Full integration testing | TBD |
| Final review with Absolute | TBD |
| Deploy to booth hardware | TBD |
| Black Hat USA 2026 Live | 8/01/2026 |