UX design plays a crucial role in developing optimal security tools—a notion that the cybersecurity industry often overlooks. If cyber product teams fail to treat cybersecurity and UX design as merged priorities, the user experience almost always suffers. Management apps such as Notion and Monday provide great examples of the success that comes at least in part because of great UX design.
To deliver a well-designed, user-friendly experience, cybersecurity and UX design must go hand in hand. Unfortunately, developers of cyber products often fail to see the need to prioritize design. Plus, many UX designers lack a background in cybersecurity. Everything comes down to process and resourcing, and product development typically leaves design out of the early planning stages.
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Some believe that a user interface doesn’t need to be pretty, as long as it’s functional. However, human behavior remains a significant factor in cybersecurity incidents, and a well-designed user experience can minimize the chances of users making mistakes that could compromise security. People won’t want to use a product that is too difficult to use, regardless of how good its functionally is.
If It’s Not Usable, It’s Not Secure
Network-security solutions often include complex settings and concepts from technology-oriented companies that tend to overlook the value of proper UX planning, research, and design. Cybersecurity companies tend to build products haphazardly with the goal of making a valid proof of concept and collecting the angel funding that is necessary to get started. This is a mistake.
The unfortunate result of this quick-and-dirty approach to building cybersecurity products is a basic, inconsistent user experience. Only when a company’s bottom line suffers because of a bad user experience—as in the case of a customer’s refusing to buy or renew a subscription because the experience is not good enough—will they have sufficient incentive to start putting real effort into UX design. To make matters worse, only when the company and its cybersecurity product continue to grow and its architecture becomes increasingly complex, do they bring UX designers on board.
It’s no wonder that we imagine enterprise security as a dark place with antiquated systems that look like they’re from the early days of the Internet—when clunky keyboards and monochrome screens were standard rather than relics of the past. This perception contrasts starkly with the sleek, modern image we often associate with other aspects of technology. It does not belong in an industry that is defined by the latest cutting-edge innovations. If cybersecurity is about preparing for the future, we must avoid getting stuck in the past.
UX design that is an afterthought rather than a driving force that is part of the fabric of the early product-development stages not only makes improvements more difficult but also presents significant risks to secure digital environments. The cyber-threat landscape is constantly evolving, and with artificial intelligence (AI) becoming more readily available, new risks are continually emerging. So what can we do?
Simplifying User Interfaces
While the user experience refers to the overall experience that a user has while interacting with a technology’s features and infrastructure, user interface (UI) focuses on the visual elements of a system or product such as its layout, aesthetics, and interactive functionality. User interfaces serve as the gateways for users interacting with software applications and digital devices and directly influence products’ user experience and usability.
An easy-to-navigate user interface plays a significant role in ensuring robust security measures by guiding users toward secure actions and behaviors, providing clear instructions for implementing security measures, and raising awareness about potential risks and measures to mitigate them.
Security user interfaces that incorporate clear instructions, feedback, and data visualizations can help companies better visualize their security posture and minimize the chances of users making mistakes that could lead to misconfigurations, cybersecurity errors, or unintentional security breaches. Facilitating the understanding and ownership of cybersecurity empowers users to be active participants in protecting themselves from cyberattacks.
Balancing Usability and Security
When incorporating UX design into cybersecurity products, a trade-off often exists between usability and security. While security measures such as frequent authentication prompts or elaborate password requirements might provide robust protection, they could also introduce complexity and negatively impact the user experience.
Companies often implement security at the expense of usability, but secure systems do not have to be difficult for users to employ successfully. Striking the right balance can be complex and require cross-functional collaboration, but is crucial to ensure that users can effectively interact with a system while maintaining a high level of security.
Bringing UX Designers in Early
The key to achieving a seamless, easy-to-use product experience, while also ensuring the protection of users’ data lies in integrating UX design as part of the development process rather than adding it on after completing the product’s user interface. You can achieve this level of integration through proper product design, from planning through launch.
Imagine a scenario in which a cybersecurity team develops a highly secure digital product, but UX designers are not involved in the decision-making process. The resulting product would be likely to have a clunky, confusing user interface that would not only lead to user frustration but also to potential security vulnerabilities—for example, when users resort to writing down their passwords or using easy-to-guess variations of them, undermining the system’s intended security benefits.
Cybersecurity is multilayered, and its complex concepts can be challenging to understand. But if it doesn’t work for the average user, it simply doesn’t work. UX design ensures that security features and controls are user friendly, enabling users to easily configure and manage them. A successful cybersecurity user experience encourages users to actively participate in securing their systems.
Gathering User Feedback
Overly complex security measures can deter users from implementing them and decrease product adoption. Poorly designed user interfaces can drive users away. It is important to continuously test and refine your designs to ensure both the effectiveness of security systems and user satisfaction.
You can achieve an optimal balance between cybersecurity and design by gathering user feedback and iterating on designs through an ongoing learning process. Embedding feedback mechanisms into a product helps contribute to a continuously improving user interface, ensuring that design solutions remain relevant and effective.
Embracing Continuous Evaluation and Improvement
Cybersecurity threats constantly evolve—as do users’ expectations. Embrace a mindset of continuous evaluation and adaptation by regularly reviewing and updating security measures, design patterns, and educational resources to stay ahead of emerging threats and align with industry best practices.
By leveraging metrics and establishing an effective feedback loop, you can embrace an iterative-design approach that identifies areas for improvement and incorporates user feedback at various stages of the product-development process. Open communication with users also ensures transparency and helps build user trust.
Building User Trust
At the intersection of UX design and cybersecurity, user trust is a crucial element of effective cybersecurity systems, and UX design plays a vital role in shaping users’ perceptions of trust. Unless users can trust that their information is secure, a seamless user experience is essentially meaningless. Creating digital experiences that users can trust and feel secure engaging with is a critical aspect of UX design for cybersecurity systems.
Users are more likely to adopt and adhere to security protocols if they can easily understand them and they are easy to implement. User trust, which is fostered by good UX design, is essential for maintaining a high level of cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity by Design
UX design and cybersecurity are inherently intertwined, shaping how users interact with digital products. By making security products easier to use, we can enhance user satisfaction and create a more secure digital environment. As cyber threats continually evolve, UX design remains a necessary ally of development teams in the effective implementation of cybersecurity measures.
Recognizing an inevitable flaw in legacy technology, Kunal founded dope.security, leveraging the fly-direct Secure Web Gateway (SWG). Kunal has many years of experience in the security industry. He previously led Product at Forcepoint, which addressed insider threat, DLP/CASB, and endpoint, as well as the Internet of Things (IoT), and the data-center security portfolio at Symantec. Read More
