Understand the Holistic Experience to Improve Cybersecurity Products with Lindsey Wallace

Human-Centered Security

When thinking about building products for security teams, we often emphasize the technical side: reduced false positives, new detection techniques, and automation. But what about asking things like: how do security teams work together? What excites a security analyst about their job? How can we help them do more of that? What does the experience look like across a suite of cybersecurity products? To improve the user experience for security teams—and improve security outcomes—you have to think holistically.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How a centralized UX research team fosters meta-analysis across different personas, workflows, and a suite of products.
• Why in-person research—like visiting a security operations center (SOC)—is so important for UX researchers building security products.
• Creative ways of engaging with customers and learning from them.
• Why her UX research team has taken ownership over UX metrics and analytics.
• Why asking stakeholders a simple question: “What kind of evidence are you looking for?” can save you a lot of time and frustration.

Lindsey Wallace is the Director of Design Research and Strategy at Cisco Security Design. She has a PhD in Anthropology and previously worked at Adobe.