In today’s digital landscape, users demand more than just seamless user interfaces. They need secure user experiences that protect their data and build trust. Nevertheless, the UX community often overlooks cybersecurity, treating it as an afterthought rather than a core design principle. In this article, I’ll explore how integrating cybersecurity into the UX lifecycle safeguards users, builds lasting brand equity, and turns potential vulnerabilities into opportunities for innovation.
Despite the near-constant news about data breaches, online fraud, and identity theft, the UX community has, for the most part, remained silent on the topics of cybersecurity and privacy. While UX professionals often discuss brand management and the cross-channel consistency of user experiences—whether online or physical—and modalities—desktop, mobile, and tablet—and even consider the experience of visiting an affiliated social-media platform—we often don’t think about what comes after users enter their data and make their purchases. It’s as if the user experience ends when the user clicks a submit button, thereby neglecting the journey of their data beyond that point. But both users and their data persist. In fact, if users have entrusted your application with personally identifiable information (PII) or any type of financial, medical, or private information, their experience could potentially continue for decades.
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One data breach could destroy all the goodwill and trust that you’ve established through user research, usability testing, good design, and brand management. A 2023 study by IBM [1] found that 95% of breached organizations experienced more than one data breach, highlighting a persistent threat to a brand’s reputation. Consider the stress, inconvenience, and financial costs that affected users incur and the resulting ill will and broken trust. [2] A recent report revealed that two-thirds of Americans have experienced some form of data theft. [3] Most victims spent an average of four hours resolving such issues, but 10% of victims spent one month or more addressing a problem. [4] This is a staggering amount of time for a negative experience to be associated with a brand.
Plus, the negative experience of a data breach is not limited to users. Data breaches impose significant operational and financial burdens on organizations. According to IBM, the average time that identifying and containing a data breach requires is 277 days—that is, approximately 9 months. [5] Such prolonged attacks could lead to substantial disruptions in business operations as companies divert resources to address the breach. Globally, the average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million, with industries such as healthcare experiencing even higher costs. In addition to these direct expenses, companies often face reputational damage, loss of customer trust, and potential legal penalties, all of which can have long-term negative impacts on their business.
Looking beyond unintentional breaches, even intentional data-sharing practices can expose users to unforeseen risks. The 2023 ITRC Data Breach Report [6] reveals that the numbers of data compromises continue to rise, with the sale or misuse of sensitive information often leading to unexpected and detrimental consequences for users. With the aid of search engines, data-mining tools, and social-media platforms, hackers can connect the dots, correlating various bits of information to launch devastating attacks against individuals.
Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into more and more digital experiences expands security vulnerabilities. AI systems, especially those that have been trained on sensitive datasets, introduce new challenges such as model-inversion attacks, adversarial inputs, and bias amplification. Left unchecked, these risks could compromise users’ trust, violate privacy regulations, and create ethical dilemmas for organizations.
As user advocates, UX professionals need to place the security and privacy of users at the forefront. If we don’t take on the responsibility, who will? A Pew Research study found that the majority of Americans feel a lack of control over their personal information, contributing to the widespread phenomenon of breach fatigue, in which users have largely become resigned to data insecurity and privacy loss. [7] Breach fatigue reflects a growing acceptance that online transactions inherently come with risks of compromised data, diminished privacy, and identity theft. [8] Certainly, as an industry, we can do better! As tech-savvy individuals, we’re as much at risk as our users, so any gains we make will help us personally and professionally.
What Can UX Professionals Do?
We can ensure that our product teams build applications with security and privacy in mind. By incorporating cybersecurity and privacy into the UX lifecycle, as Figure 1 shows, we can ensure that we create a safe, secure, and lasting experience for our users. We can also facilitate discussions within the business and use our data to support financial investment in cybersecurity engineers, analysts, and infrastructure.
Figure 1—Cybersecurity and the UX lifecycle
Let’s consider the actions we can take in greater detail.
Educate Yourself on Cybersecurity Risks
Why this matters: Understanding the cybersecurity landscape is foundational to creating secure user experiences. Many security threats exploit design flaws or uninformed user behaviors, making it essential for UX professionals to stay well-informed.
What to do: Familiarize yourself with common threats such as phishing, ransomware, social engineering, and behavioral biometrics. Knowledge of these cybersecurity risks equips you to design user interfaces that discourage risky behaviors—for example, clicking deceptive links—and encourages secure practices such as the creation of strong passwords. Learn about AI-specific risks such as adversarial attacks, in which malicious inputs are crafted to fool AI systems, or model inversion, where attackers use AI outputs to infer sensitive training data. Consider referring to resources such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines [9] or Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) to deepen your understanding. Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to learn about advanced technologies such as AI-driven threat detection and behavioral biometrics, which could inform your designs.
Break Down Silos Between User Experience and Cybersecurity
Why this matters: Product teams often treat security as a separate concern from usability, but users experience them together. Fostering collaboration ensures that security measures align with users’ needs.
What to do: Treat cybersecurity requirements as equal to system usability requirements. Facilitate open communication between the UX and security teams throughout the design process. Ensure that designs accommodate secure features such as password resets, encrypted messaging, and inclusive authentication methods—for example, alternatives to CAPTCHA. Include cross-functional metrics to measure a solution’s success—for example, reduced phishing attempts, higher password-recovery success rates, fewer fraud incidents, or lower volumes of security-related customer complaints.
Leverage Usability Testing to Explore Attitudes Toward Security
Why this matters: Usability testing is an opportunity to discover users’ behaviors and attitudes toward security, which can inform design decisions that make secure practices more apparent and accessible.
What to do: Incorporate questions and scenarios about security and privacy into usability studies. Test users’ reactions to multifactor authentication, password requirements, and privacy settings. For example, users who are frustrated with multifactor authentication might prefer biometrics, offering insights into how to balance security and usability. If your product integrates AI, include scenarios that test users’ understanding of AI-driven features such as automated fraud detection or personalized recommendations. Measure whether users comprehend and trust how AI impacts their security. Explore risky behaviors during testing to identify opportunities for proactive design solutions.
Incorporate Cybersecurity Personas
Why this matters: Traditional personas rarely account for users’ attitudes toward security and privacy. Adding this layer creates a more nuanced understanding of users’ needs, enhancing your ability to design for diverse risk tolerances. Leading companies such as Apple demonstrate how prioritizing users’ privacy can provide competitive advantage. Apple’s privacy overview [10] emphasizes transparency, user control, and encryption—key elements that resonate with privacy-conscious users and strengthen brand trust.
What to do: Expand personas to include cybersecurity traits. For example:
Data-Breach Fatigued users value simplicity in privacy settings.
Convenience Seekers prioritize ease of use over security, but you can guide them toward safer habits through thoughtful design.
Address Cross-Device Security Behaviors
Why this matters: Users often interact with systems across multiple devices, including mobile, desktop, tablet, and even the Internet of Things (IoT). Each platform presents unique security challenges and usability expectations. Designing for consistent, easy-to-understand, secure experiences across devices ensures that users remain protected without unnecessary friction. According to McKinsey & Company, [11] users expect seamless security across devices, making it critical to design consistent workflows for tasks such as authentication.
What to do:
Map user journeys across devices. Understand how users move between platforms for key tasks such as logging in, managing accounts, or handling sensitive data. Identify potential weak points in security and usability.
Standardize security workflows. Ensure processes such as password resets, multifactor authentication (MFA), and secure data sharing are consistent and easy to understand across devices. For example, mobile-first MFA workflows should integrate seamlessly with desktop access.
Account for device-specific behaviors. Recognize how user interactions differ by platform. For instance, mobile users might prefer biometric authentication, while desktop users might rely on password managers.
Test security designs in multidevice scenarios.
Educate users on security best practices across platforms. Provide device-specific guidance—for example, how to protect IoT devices—to build user confidence and engagement.
Collaborate with Cybersecurity Experts During Design Reviews
Why this matters: Catching potential vulnerabilities early in the design process reduces costs and ensures user flows that are secure from the outset.
What to do: Bring in cybersecurity specialists during wireframing or prototyping to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities. Ensure that password-recovery flows are secure and accessible. If AI is a component of your product, involve AI specialists to evaluate risks such as adversarial attacks, explainability challenges, and compliance with evolving AI regulations. Collaborate on advanced security measures such as AI-driven fraud detection, and ensure that these tools are transparent and customizable by users. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework provides an excellent foundation for aligning UX design with security best practices.
Rethink the Design of Terms and Conditions
Why this matters: Long, unreadable agreements alienate users and obscure risks, leading to uninformed consent. Simplifying this process builds trust and helps users make informed decisions.
What to do: Collaborate with Legal teams to design transparent, digestible terms and conditions and use plain language, visual summaries, or progressive-disclosure techniques. Ensure that users understand how a product will use their data and provide tools that support granular control over permissions—for example, “Allow this app to access location only while in use.” Explore visual storytelling or interactive elements to make terms of service more engaging and less intimidating.
Evaluate Third-Party Data Access
Why this matters: Many data breaches stem either from vulnerabilities in third-party partnerships or poorly managed data-sharing channels. As highlighted in Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, third-party risks account for a significant portion of data breaches, [12] emphasizing the need for rigorous evaluations and clear agreements. Reviewing who has access to your customer data and understanding how they might use or sell it can reduce risks, enhance transparency, and help build trust.
What to do: Organize cross-functional workshops or facilitated sessions with stakeholders from Legal, IT, Customer Experience, and third-party management teams. Use these sessions to:
Identify all external partners with access to customer data.
Map out all channels where third parties can buy, sell, or share data.
Evaluate whether each data-sharing relationship is necessary. Consider whether they’re aligned with users’ privacy expectations.
Evaluate third parties’ cybersecurity postures and compliance standards. Compare them with your own.
Establish prohibitions or limitations on reselling or redistributing customer data.
Establish incident-reporting procedures in case a breach affects shared data.
Establish accountability. Ensure that your organization engages in regular audits or reviews of third-party security measures as part of your data-sharing agreements.
Incorporate findings into users’ communications. Transparently communicate with users about how third parties handle their data, providing reassurances about the safeguards that are in place.
Address Security During Content Modeling and UX Design
Why this matters: The structure and display of content impacts data security. Overexposure of sensitive information or poorly designed timeouts can lead to vulnerabilities. Thoughtful content design ensures the protection of sensitive user data and empowers users to manage their security settings effectively.
What to do:
Audit displayed information. Evaluate what sensitive data to display—for example, PII or financial details—and limit its exposure. Mask credit-card numbers or personal details whenever possible. Avoid displaying unnecessary data in user interfaces.
Implement secure session management. Design clear session timeouts and automatic logout features to prevent unauthorized access. Communicate timeouts to users with friendly, informative prompts.
Create easy-to-understand security settings. Provide clear tools that let users control their privacy such as dashboards for data-sharing preferences. Simplify these settings and make them accessible to all.
Enhance the communication of security status. Enhancing the communication of security status involves designing user interfaces that reassure users that their data is protected while offering clear channels for reporting suspicious activity. Privacy dashboards can be particularly effective, allowing users to monitor and adjust data-sharing permissions with ease. Streamlined workflows for tasks such as password creation and management reduce friction, making secure practices easy rather than burdensome. Plus, integrating real-time security status indicators such as Secure Connection badges fosters users’ trust by providing visible assurance of their safety throughout their interactions.
Prepare for the Worst: Consider Data-Breach Scenarios
Why this matters: Data breaches are inevitable. How a company handles them can make or break users’ trust. Proactively designing for these scenarios helps mitigate fallout.
What to do:
Create a journey map. Trace the user’s emotional and practical experience during a breach, identifying key touchpoints such as breach notification, guidance, mitigation steps, and followups. Highlight potential painpoints and design solutions to address them.
Create a service blueprint. Detail the company’s internal processes and interactions behind each user touchpoint, including customer-support, legal-compliance, and IT security actions. Use this blueprint to align internal workflows with users’ needs.
Simulate breach communication workflows. Develop user scenarios to map out the communication journey during and after a breach, ensuring clarity and empathy in notifications. For example, avoid the use of technical jargon and instead use actionable, reassuring language.
Design clear, empathetic notifications. Notify users promptly, providing a detailed explanation of the breach, its scope, and its impact on them. Include personalized messages, whenever possible, to show genuine concern.
Outline actionable user steps. Provide step-by-step instructions for mitigating the breach’s effects such as changing passwords, freezing credit, monitoring accounts for fraud, or using available support channels.
Incorporate visual aids and guidance. Use visualizations such as infographics, progress trackers, or video tutorials to explain mitigation steps. Ensure that instructions are accessible to users of all abilities.
Engage users in the mitigation process. Offer dedicated customer-support channels such as live chats or helplines to assist users during recovery. Consider follow-up communications to check on users’ progress and satisfaction.
Test and refine your design. Run breach-simulation exercises with internal teams and users to identify gaps in your communication and recovery workflows. Use your insights to refine the journey map and improve user satisfaction during real incidents.
Conclusion
As UX professionals, we are more than designers of user interfaces—we are custodians of users’ trust and advocates for their safety. By embedding cybersecurity into every stage of the UX lifecycle, we can create user experiences that are not only easy to use and engaging but also secure, resilient, and future proof. Creating a secure user experience is more than a technical challenge; it is a commitment to safeguarding the digital lives of the people who rely on our products. With the integration of AI, our responsibility grows even more complex. By addressing vulnerabilities such as adversarial attacks and ensuring transparency in AI-driven systems, we can build systems that users understand and trust.
Proactively addressing privacy concerns, mitigating security risks, and fostering collaboration with cybersecurity teams sends a powerful message: users’ safety is paramount. This builds brand loyalty, strengthens organizational resilience, and demonstrates leadership in an era of increasing digital threats. Secure UX is no longer optional—it is both a competitive advantage and a moral imperative.
The path to creating a secure digital future requires effort, vigilance, and creativity. As UX designers, technologists, and innovators, we have a unique opportunity to lead this charge, setting new standards for trust and safety in every interaction. Let’s harness our skills and partnerships to create a world in which safety and usability are not just priorities but foundational principles. Together, we can design a digital future that empowers users, strengthens brands, and inspires confidence for generations to come.
[4] Erika Harrel and Alexandra Thompson. “Victims of Identity Theft, 2021.” (PDF) U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 12, 2021. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
[5] IBM. “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023.” IBM.com, 2023. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
Jolie specializes in human-computer interactions, particularly UX design and research, with a foundation in human factors and systems engineering. Her career spans government, healthcare, and cybersecurity sectors, in which she has consistently translated complex user needs into easy-to-use, efficient systems. Jolie has applied machine learning (ML) to improve threat alerts in cybersecurity-operations centers, enhancing analysts’ decision-making and response times. In healthcare, she has explored probabilistic modeling using Veterans Health Administration (VHA) data to support clinical decision-making and surface actionable insights for medical teams. Plus, she has leveraged ML to align cybersecurity training courses with key knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), optimizing career-path development. Currently, Jolie’s focus is on Customer Experience (CX), which is emerging as a transformative paradigm in the federal space, reshaping how agencies interact with the public and deliver services. By integrating human-centered design with AI capabilities, she aims to bridge the gap between technical innovation and user empowerment, ensuring that emerging technologies enhance rather than complicate user experiences. Read More
