All cyber security practitioners will be familiar with that glazed look in the eye of a non IT muggle when you start talking in cyber to them. The same happened when I mentioned the SolarWinds hack yesterday, so I used an analogy based on castles in England 1000 years ago, it went like this:
"...King Putinski's greed in stealing the siege weapons was his downfall..."
1000 years ago Bamburgh Castle in the North of England was considered unassailable and it was guarded by their equivalent of special forces, they even had a trained falcon from the merchant Sunny Wings which alerted the castle to any changes it saw.
The Lord Eye of Fire, who owned the castle was surprised one day to discover his secret castle siege weapons had been stolen, these would help him break into his enemies castles. He quickly notified his allies to look out for his siege weapons whilst he investigated the problem.
A year earlier, a spy for King Putinski, who was hostile to England, had heard a rumour in a pub called the Tweeting Bird that the merchant Sunny Wings left the yard where he trained his falcons unlocked. King Putinski's men would go into the yard each night and train the falcons to do what they needed them to do. The Sunny Wings merchant didn't even notice that the falcons were tired.
The Falcon at Bamburgh Castle was getting old and they requested a replacement bird, the merchant approached the castle, was recognised and welcomed, the falcon was released and started work, what they didn't know was that the falcon would unlock the backdoor, enabling the siege weapons to be stolen.
King Putinski's greed in stealing the siege weapons was his downfall, as it was quickly detected and many other castle's noticed that their falcons from Sunny Wings were also opening their back doors and King Putinski's access to all the other Castles, including the Kingdom of Trumpton was denied.
The End
Far from perfect but it got the point across
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