At The European Information Security Summit in London, Thom Langford, founder of TL(2) Security, said that effective storytelling is important to security professionals if they want to evoke reactions, behaviors and actions from others.
“Stories are important to us as security professionals, because, to be blunt, we’re normally really bad at putting across information to people who are not security professionals.”
If we focused more on telling stories, Langford added, we would actually generate an experience.
“When people experience things, they create a visceral response in their bodies and they start to remember things.”
Langford cited an equation that security professional can adopt to better translate important security topics. The equation is: value (the knowledge you have and wish to impart) plus story (the best way of imparting the value) equals experience (the memorable thing that allows people to absorb the information you are sharing).
“Storytelling is as old as time,” Langford concluded, “and it doesn’t matter if it’s a short story or a longer story, what’s important is that people learn, understand and then are able to impart knowledge onto others.”