Repackaging Information Security – Introducing The Analogies Project

Information security.

You often ‘get it’ or you don’t. Or at least thats the way it has often seemed to me.

Sure, if you have a security issue or question, you can use the search engines or hunt around on Twitter and the like and almost certainly find an answer. But often times that answer can be just as bewildering as the question itself – just ask Javvad who reminds us of the need for plain speech in this arena -

But the language used when presenting security-related information isn’t the only barrier to understanding. Often, and quite rightly so in my opinion, there is a feeling amongst outsiders to the industry that the whole topic of information security is a rather boring one.

Enter The Analogies Project

The Analogies Project is the brainchild of Bruce Hallas who has been a well-known and highly respected member of the information security industry for many years now. He, along with other top quality contributors, will be using The Analogies Project to offer an alternative approach to increasing understanding. And that is by making the subject matter interesting.

Strangely, this is an approach I haven’t seen too often before (though the book Consequences by Barclays is a damn fine read) and I strongly believe that Bruce can achieve great things here if the community get behind him.

The project aims to address the biggest challenge we face within information security. Influencing cultural attitudes within organisations and more broadly across society towards information security. The project is a not for profit venture. It is a social enterprise.
Bruce Hallas

The project will use stories that are already of interest to a wide audience and will then seek the parallels between them and modern, real-life topics surrounding information confidentiality, integrity and availability.

So what’s different? The project aims to, at first, draw parallels between the progress of humanity and information confidentiality, integrity and availability. We don’t want to educate society about security. We want to talk about the impact it has on peoples, organisations and nation states prosperity. We want to draw the parallels with what people actually find interesting in life, not what information security people find interesting.
Bruce Hallas

The analogies have already begun – just click on the images at the bottom of the home page screen -

- to find the first few interesting topics which cover:

• Formula 1
• Trade Winds
• Spinning Jenny
• Romeo and Juliet

Each of these are quite short snippets that you can read in a matter of seconds but they make valuable security points too.

I for one will be heading back to The Analogies Project on a regular basis and you can too, either by visiting the site, following on Twitter or by receiving email alerts.

You can also join Bruce, Neira Jones, Frank Wintle and Jonathan Armstrong in contributing if you wish and there are also opportunities to help sponsor or promote the initiative too.

If you do check out The Analogies Project – and I strongly urge you to do so, regardless of your current level of security understanding – then I would love to hear what you think of it via the comments section below.