5 Fables from a seasoned CISO

Communication is the key to success as a CISO. You have to find ways to bridge the gap between tech and the boardroom, and bring people into the fold – giving them reasons to care about security, and showing them why their role in your organisation’s resilience is important. 

So we spoke to Matthias Muhlert (Cyber Chef at Dr. August Oetker KG - Die Oetker-Gruppe) about communication. A self-proclaimed Strategic Alchemist and Digital Bodyguard, we asked him why metaphors matter and why creative, engaging communication is so important for CISOs today. 

And true to form, he shared his perspective in the form of these five 100-word fables. We recommend reading them out loud. 

1. The Tower of Babel, 2024 edition 

“We once spoke in CVEs, CWEs, and CVSS.

“Nobody outside the tower understood us, so they kept building higher windows and narrower doors.

“One day a child drew a dragon on the wall and scrawled ‘Thing that eats our lunch money.’

“The adults laughed – then realised the drawing had more board votes than the 400-page risk register.

“Metaphor isn’t decoration; it’s the elevator that still works when the stairs are on fire.” 

2. The Interpreter’s Paradox

“In every boardroom there’s a ghost protocol: the unspoken belief that ‘technical’ equals ‘complicated.’

“My first lesson was that clarity is subtraction, not translation.

“Strip away the adjectives and you’re left with verbs: what breaks, what moves, what costs.

“The second lesson was harder: sometimes you must hand the mic to the ghost itself – let the breach speak through raw screenshots of empty bank accounts.

“When the room goes silent, communication has finally started.” 

3. The Recipe for Salt

“Good security comms taste like seawater: 96% familiar, 4% impossible to ignore.

“The 96% is the business language you share; the 4% is the single metric or narrative that shifts the tide of every future conversation.

“Too much salt and the dish is inedible; too little and the ocean forgets it’s the ocean.” 

4. The Mentor Who Never Spoke

“I once reverse-engineered a mentor from a single slide deck he left behind. It contained one diagram: a loop labelled ‘Observe → Orient → Decide → Act’ with a sticky note that read, ‘But first, apologise to the user.’

“That artifact taught me comms is about leaving trails, not lectures – my Rosetta Stone for empathy.

“Heroes don’t have to answer your email; sometimes they just leave the right artifact in the right repo.” 

5. The Apprentice’s Compass

“Early-career advice is usually a map. I offer a compass instead:

• North = Curiosity (follow the weird edge cases)
• East = Generosity (teach what you just learned)
• South = Humility (log every “I don’t know”; it’s lighter than luggage)
• West = Story (the only exploit that runs on human OS without patches)

“Keep the needle twitching to embrace uncertainty in our fast-evolving field; the map is outdated the moment it’s printed.” 

Stick them on your wall 

Print these fables and stick them on your wall. Let them guide you as you figure out how to communicate cybersecurity challenges in a way that makes people care. 

And join us at Black Hat MEA 2025 to learn directly from Muhlert – and build a little wonderful strangeness into your cybersecurity career. 

Find Matthias Muhlert on LinkedIn.