Cisco Secure Application on Cisco Observability Platform
Table of contents
Problem definition
Cisco’s upcoming observability platform (aptly called Cisco Observability Platform) wanted to bolster its narrative of full-stack observability to incorporate security monitoring amongst the usual suspects of application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and digital experience monitorinng.
This would also be the first step towards a stronger narrative between Cisco’s security and observability initiatives. The narrative link will also eventually help in cross-sells.
My role
I was the lead designer within the core team (1 product manager, 5 engineers, 1 user researcher). I drove:
- Visioning and refinement of the core use cases.
- Designing the information architecutre of the application.
- Migration of the entire application to a new design system.
- Helped define behavior of the extension/module system within the platform.
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:
- Cisco Secure Application would provide vulnerability monitoring capabilities for application services, and kubernetes monitoring.
- 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.