How Art Appreciation Supplements Cybersecurity Skills

COMMENTARY

I recently delivered one of the keynotes at the Fall Summit 2024 for Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), an industry consortium that works to build cybersecurity and resilience in the global financial system. My talk began with a lyrical analysis of the Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now" and continued into how we can take lessons from the song and apply them to our security programs.

To be clear, this was a risk. An audience of security professionals and security executives in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) vertical looking for information about technical innovation and new research may not respond positively to a talk that centers on a lyrical analysis of a song written in the 1960s.

If you aren't familiar with the lyrics, I highly encourage a listen — it's a great song.

What I learned is that people like it when we draw inspiration from sources outside of cybersecurity. After all, we are a relatively new field, and other professions have likely figured out a few things that we're still trying to work out. Security professionals can — and should — learn from other fields and apply those lessons to our work.

1. Pay Attention

The analog world has many lessons to teach us. Inspiration, ideas, and solutions are all around us. We simply need to open our eyes to what surrounds us. It is not easy to take in everything when we are focused on our jobs and everyday life, but it is still worth taking a step back now and again to take in the wider world and the lessons it can teach us. Many of them are applicable to the security challenges we face.

2. Open a Book

It may seem old-fashioned, but books are still one of the most amazing sources of knowledge and inspiration. Whether classic or modern, some of the top authors have grappled with, processed, thought through, and written about some of the most difficult and challenging issues. It would be silly to cast all that aside and think that there isn't anything in there we can learn from as a security community. So while William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and others may not immediately bring security to mind, we are almost certain to find important lessons in their works.

3. Read Poetry

One of the things that amazes me most is how poets can take the same words that most of us use day to day and form them into the most beautiful works of art. Aside from the powerful messages that poems can convey, there is a unique angle to problem-solving that poets take in order to be able to transform language as they do. As security professionals, we can learn a lot from both the messages that poets convey and the manner in which they do so. We as security professionals can certainly learn to convey more valuable messages to our stakeholders, as well as how to convey those messages more clearly.

4. Listen to Lyrics

Although I only recently gave my first talk based on lyrical analysis, I have been listening to and analyzing lyrics for quite some time. Like authors and poets, good lyricists are also quite talented at getting powerful messages into relatively few words. In the security field, we can learn a lot from this. First off, understanding that our management, executives, and other stakeholders want fewer but more powerful words from us is an important lesson. So is being able to deliver that message in a catchy, fun, or impactful manner, as is the case with music. While it may be tempting to fill reports and presentations with an overdose of data, successful lyricists would advise us otherwise.

5. Appreciate Art

If you've ever seen an original work of art (in a museum, for example), you know that it can sometimes take you aback in a way that seeing it online or seeing a replica cannot. While I am not a visual person, I can appreciate that some people are. As security professionals, we can take a lesson from this. Some people need to see data come alive visually in order to internalize it. We can take inspiration and learn from other fields that have worked out how to present data visually.

6. Study Creativity

Creativity comes in many forms. Whether someone is an author, a poet, a lyricist, an artist, or any other creative type, they all have one thing in common: They take inspiration from the world around them and synthesize something new. As security professionals, we can learn from this. There is no shortage of the same old conventional wisdom floating around our industry. Much of that conventional wisdom has led to less-than-ideal outcomes. Creative thinking, fresh ideas, and new approaches could potentially do wonders for our field if we allow them to.

Coda

Literature, poetry, music, and art may not be sources you think of when looking for fresh thinking around security problems. They probably should be, though. Other fields that have been around considerably longer than the security field are likely good sources of inspiration for creative approaches to solving security issues. It seems about time we consider that when looking to advance the state of our field.