5 tips to make Cybersecurity presentations that dont put people to sleep
Cure the “death by PowerPoint” plague with these tips
Cybersecurity is an exciting field to be in honestly with terms like hacking , cyberattacks, ransomware etc. all making headlines in the news
And yet Cybersecurity presentations can end up being some of the most excruciatingly boring events you can ever attend
If you have ever worked in Cybersecurity then chances are you would have been asked to present something at one point or another
It could be at a security conferences or maybe presenting a security update to the CISO or the CEO
Tell me if this is a familiar scenario
You put in the hours making ( what you think ) is the greatest PowerPoint presentation in human history
You rehearse it multiple times in front of the mirror until your family members think you have gone insane
Then comes the big day
and kapoot ..
Right in the middle of presenting, you catch the CISO / CEO dozing off ( or worst of all ) checking their phone while you are talking
At conferences, this is especially depressing when audience members dont even bother to hide their yawns ( especially if you are presenting in the afternoon and everyone is going into the post-lunch coma !!)
If your conference or meeting is being done remotely then it is even more important to keep and retain the audience’s attention.
Below are a few tips that I learned over many many years of goofing up while giving presentations to CEOs, Boards, Conferences etc.
Note: Honestly, most of these can be applied to any field and not just cybersecurity
1 . Avoid Bullet-Point hell
Nobody
likes
to
read
text
broken
down
into
15 bullet
points
in
one
slide
You have probably seen these slides like the above where a person taught compressing the entire NIST standard in one slide was a good idea .
Avoid this like the plague
Nobody is going to remember this information after you have finished speaking it
Put four or max five main points into the slide and focus on those
2. Avoid the Table of Torture
A close cousin to bullet point hell is the table of torture . Again where a person thinks compressing the 500 page pen-test report into one table on one slide was a good idea
Do you honestly expect anyone to engage with the presentation if it looks like the below ?
Again compress and summarize the main ideas into 4 or 5 points and try to focus there
3. Avoid the blob of text
Another relative is the blob of text which is pretty much the same thing but this time the person does not even bother making a table or bullet and just dumps 800 words into a blob which they expect the audience to read
4. Do not become a robot
Simple tip .. the audience can read what is written on the slide
YOU DONT NEED TO READ IT OUT WORD FOR WORD
Your audience will immediately zone out once they see you are just repeating the words of the slide a parrot
Narrow down the key points and try to speak naturally instead of looking at the slide every 5 seconds
Which brings me to my next key point
5. Put visuals that grab attention
Visuals will always be better than words
Instead of a 100 row table showing the security findings .. put a graph
Instead of a blob of text explaining the the attack .. show a visualization of how the attack happened
If you are presenting at a conference you have even more freedom and make it look more natural like a doodle or meme ( dont go overboard though ! )
Canva has some amazingly natural looking templates you can use
People will usually forget most of the verbal stuff but visual information stays with the audience
I hope this was useful. Let me know what other tips you would recommend when giving cybersecurity presentations !