Story Simplifies The Complex

One of the superpowers of a good story is that it takes the abstract and makes it concrete.?

It illustrates an idea or concept and gives it life.?

Let’s pick an abstract idea such as security.?

Security is important for businesses, particularly in a connected world where much of our information and data is vulnerable to cyber attacks?

In the realm of cyber security you have jargon like ransomware, phishing, firewalls, bots, authentication and more [these are just the easy ones].

A whole industry is built upon helping companies stay secure in a cyber world.?

To simplify an abstract principle like security we need a good story.

To tell a story we need a few key ingredients:?

• A character with a desire
• Seeking to achieve the desire but facing a challenge.?
• Seeking ways to overcome the challenge??
• Overcoming the challenge to achieve the desire. [or failing]
• Becoming a new character in the process.?

Of course a company case study is a perfect way to illustrate a principle like security particularly in the case of cyber fraud or data leaks.?

However a simpler story can suffice.?

A team of mice all receive an email promoting cheese. The head mouse is always teaching her team of mice to be wary of the cat, who is getting craftier about her ways of catching mice. However, the head mouse has not taught her team that emails about cheese are dangerous. One in five mice click on the email promoting cheese. Little do they know that the cat can now see the computer generated maps of all corridors that they run through every day? and one by one mice start to disappear from the colony. Before long the head mouse realizes this and the whole colony moves to a new burrow where the cat cannot trace them. In the future, the head mouse teaches all the mice, “don’t click on email links about cheese.”

Cyber security is important.