Next, he clicked from the main dashboard. A button appeared he had never noticed before: “Select update file…”

On the morning of the big experiment, Arjun booted up the PC. The familiar green eye of ESET appeared in the system tray—but it was no longer green. It was a dull, worried orange.

The IT director sent him a one-line email: “Good call on the offline update. Keep that USB stick in a drawer.”