Beyond the Firewall: Teaching Technical Communication in Cybersecurity

Introduction

In Part 1 of our Beyond the Firewall series, we highlighted why soft skills like communication and empathy are just as vital as technical know-how. In this post, we go deeper into technical communication—what it means in cybersecurity, why it’s often overlooked, and how you can teach it directly in your IT curriculum or onboarding program.

Strong technical communication helps:

  • Analysts translate complex threats to business stakeholders
  • Engineers collaborate across silos
  • Leaders make confident, informed decisions

Without it, your best technical minds may fail to gain traction—or worse, contribute to security failures.

What Makes Cyber Communication Unique?

Cybersecurity professionals must:

  • Be precise, because technical errors can have legal and financial consequences
  • Adapt tone, whether talking to execs, vendors, or engineers
  • Explain urgency, especially when time-sensitive incidents unfold

Yet, many are trained only to configure tools—not explain what they’re doing or why it matters.

Real-World Examples

Example 1: Alert Fatigue

Too often, logs and alerts are copied and pasted into incident reports with no context:

“IDS triggered rule 2008987: ET SCAN Potential SSH Scan from 198.51.100.23.”

Better:

“We detected repeated SSH scans from 198.51.100.23, triggering our IDS at 2:03 AM. No successful logins occurred, but the IP has been blocked and added to our denylist.”

Example 2: Risk Explanation

Poor:

“The system is vulnerable to CVE-2024-XXXX.”

Better:

“The marketing server runs a version of Apache vulnerable to CVE-2024-XXXX. If exploited, this could allow remote code execution and compromise client data. A patch is available and will be applied during this evening’s maintenance window.”

How to Teach It: Mini-Module

Activity 1: Explain It to a 5-Year-Old

  • Choose a topic (e.g., 2FA, SQL injection, encryption)
  • Students must explain it in 2-3 sentences using no jargon
  • Peer feedback round: Did it make sense?

Example:

  • Topic: Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
  • Student Explanation: “It’s like having a key and a password. Even if someone knows your password, they also need your phone to get in.”

Activity 2: Translate a Syslog

Provide a raw syslog and ask students to:

  • Summarize what happened in plain English
  • Identify if action is needed
  • Describe it to a technical peer vs. a non-technical manager

Example Syslog:

Jun 30 12:12:01 server1 sshd[2201]: Failed password for invalid user root from 203.0.113.5 port 55322 ssh2

Student Output:

  • Plain English Summary: “Someone tried to log in as root from an IP address that’s not recognized, but the attempt failed.”
  • To a peer: “Another brute-force attempt on SSH. Source: 203.0.113.5. We should check frequency and possibly block.”
  • To a manager: “We saw a suspicious login attempt on our server but it was unsuccessful and poses no threat at this time.”

Activity 3: Incident Presentation to Leadership

Ask students to simulate presenting a small incident to company leadership using a 3-slide format:

  • Slide 1: What Happened *E.g., “Detected brute-force login attempts on web server from foreign IP addresses. No successful access.”
  • Slide 2: What We Did *E.g., “Blocked IPs, increased monitoring thresholds, confirmed no breach occurred.”
  • Slide 3: What’s Next *E.g., “Evaluating need for additional login rate-limiting and MFA policies.”

Example Talking Points:

  • To a technical audience:

    “During routine log review, we found 45+ failed SSH login attempts over 10 minutes targeting PROD-WEB-01. These originated from 203.0.113.5. We applied an IP block, verified no successful logins, and added the event to Wazuh tracking for correlation.”

  • To a non-technical audience:

    “We detected and blocked a suspicious login pattern on one of our servers. No access was gained, and there’s no threat to systems or data. We’re taking extra steps to prevent this kind of activity in the future.”

Why It Matters

Employers need professionals who can both secure systems and explain the security posture. A junior analyst who can calmly walk leadership through an incident is a future CISO in the making.

Coming Next

In Part 3 of Beyond the Firewall, we’ll dig into conflict resolution and peer collaboration—how to handle disagreements during red-team/blue-team drills, audits, and tech planning meetings.

Because security doesn’t happen in isolation—and neither does learning.