I led the design of Secure Application, a security-focused vertical on Cisco Observability Platform. It was built as one of the first 1st-party applications on the newly devised observability platform, complementing the (existing) core verticals of application performance, infrastructure monitoring, and real user monitoring.

Cisco Secure Application launched in early 2024. Read more about it here, and here.

Following Splunk’s acquisition of Cisco, Secure Application was re-launched for Splunk Observability Cloud. As I sought new challenges, I helped transition the incoming designer to take over the project.

What is Secure Application?

Modern applications are a complex network of services that fulfil various functions by transmitting data between them. These services may either themselves have vulnerabilities that can compromise this entire network, or might transmit sensitive data that can be intercepted.

Secure Application on Cisco Observability Platform is designed to monitor the security posture of such applications. It provides insights into vulnerabilities, data leaks, misconfigurations, and potential threats that could compromise the integrity of these applications. It also provides fixes and best practices to help developers and security teams fortify their applications against potential attacks.

Process

I researched the existing landscape of application security tools, and through various design artifacts helped the product team to refine the roadmap. This was to ensure that the design efforts would be focused on features that are most impactful with high feasibility of delivery.

I went through several rounds of wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing to validate the designs.

Exploring the feasible landscape

We had a good sense of the problem space, with some features such as vulnerability detection being highly feasible. Data security on the other hand was a new area for both the product and engineering team. Multiple rounds of wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes were utilized to initiate conversations with security engineers and leaders within Cisco to understand the likelihood of adoption, and profitability of building such a thing.

Below are some artifacts that were created during this phase.

Wireframes

Journey map

Prototype

This prototype was created for AppDynamics Cloud using the Particle design system. It goes through non-sequential flows covering configuration, using the service explorer with grouping and filtering capabilities, and investigating data security & vulnerability issues in services and logs.

Scaling down the roadmap for AppDynamics Cloud

Earlier wireframes and prototypes were shown to existing AppDynamics customers to gather feedback. The discussions helped in refining the roadmap by specifically identifying features that were most impactful, and feasible to deliver by the engineering team within the desired timelines. This resulted in scaling down the initial roadmap to focus on core features such as vulnerability monitoring for Kubernetes, and calculating business risk scores for business transactions, and services.

Prototype

Cisco Observability Platform becomes the new product vision

Appdynamics Cloud was being mutated into a platform play, and Secure Application was slated to be sold as two individual licenses:

1. Cisco Secure Application would provide vulnerability monitoring capabilities for application services, and kubernetes monitoring.
2. Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) would be sold as a module for Cisco Secure Application, providing data security monitoring capabilities on top of the core application security features.

Prototype