DIGITAL SECURITY ADVISOR

“The challenges I face, I've had my Google account hacked before. There was a security breach in my insurance company, which leaked my information. There was also someone using my identity multiple times. My Facebook's been hacked. I tried to use MacAfee security for my phone to just scan through and make sure there's no viruses. And then, that's probably the only service that I use. I use Credit Karma to monitor my credit to see if, my credit score changes or if anybody applies for credit cards in my name as well. I think that's about the only things that I use..”

— Research participant

background & context

AT&T provides a wide range of digital products for both businesses and consumers, including internet, voice, collaboration, and security services. With a 140-year history, the company has legacy products and third-party vendors that store data, making seamless product integration a challenge.

I worked on an Innovation team—the goal is to create light-weight, products with quick revenues—but the project quickly pivoted. Initially, business thought of leveraging an enterprise network filtering product for consumers. Unfortunately, it was a fast-fail as customer testing revealed it too difficult to use and manage.

My role

My role on the Innovation team was to provide the customer experience guidance and research for the proposed product. Since the initial idea failed, I iterated on the idea using what I learned from customer research. Throughout the process, I ran research consulting with researchers, created quick storyboards for testing with customers, and prototypes to make iterative design changes.

RESEARCH

This is what we learned from customer research about the landscape of consumer cybersecurity.

Complexity of Information
Security products often come with technical jargon that can be difficult for the average consumer to understand.

Constantly evolving landscape
New threats emerge regularly, and security products must adapt to counter these threats. Keeping up with these changes can be challenging for consumers.

Disparate and redundant security solutions
Overlapping features are complicating customer understanding making it hard for customers to know which product is best suited for their specific needs.

Customers are telling us they’re using security products but the complex and changing nature of cyberthreats make it hard for them to know if they are working or if they are doing what they need to protect themselves.

People are lobbing ad hoc security approaches to their problems, hoping for the best, but not really knowing what tools cover which scenarios, products, or what proactive actions to take place to keep themselves, their devices, and their families safe. 

HOW MIGHT WE

Create a unified and cohesive understanding of security, across all of AT&T’s digital channels?

Our team pivoted to a solution that would meet the customer challenges. The ‘Digital Security Advisor’ would be a free service for customers to use that would monitor their cybersecurity posture and provide personalized guidance based on different views of the family composition, products/devices used, networks, and user behavior.

The ‘Digital Security Advisor’ would be an API that leveraged a centralized data lake using customer network and wireless insights.

For the business, this meant bringing a continuity of product awareness and offerings as the ‘Digital Security Advisor’ would show up in all AT&T’s digital products; acting as a thread to piece the experiences togther.

For the customer, the Digital Security Advisor aimed to address three customer challenges:

• Intangibility: Cybersecurity seems abstract and invisible. With increasing threats and AI advancement, it can be challenging for customers to understand and assess security posture and risks, which is often relying on guesswork. There is no current aggregated view to see everything is secure.

• Cognitive overload: Cybersecurity sounds complicated, technical, and difficult to understand. There are many options and choices. Which feature best fits your security needs? Antivirus? VPN? Website filtering?  Content controls?  Location tracking?

• Maintenance: Too many threats to keep track of, set up, and update, Being late to act on threats poses risk. There is a customer need to react in a timely manner and to be proactive for preventing new threats that occur.

RESULTS

Partnering with one of the app teams, I collaborating with a UI designer to create a final look for the ‘Digital Security Advisor’ which I tested with customers. The Advisor tested provided the following for customers:

• Security Score

• Insights & recommendations

• Actionable steps to take to make improvements

The prototype research from customer testing showed the ‘Digital Security Advisor’ made customers feel more confident and secure.

PROTOTYPE RESEARCH

Outcome

What we learned though the partnerships across the org was that disparate data and third-parties would block the product from being built. An Initiative began to expedite the creation of a centralized data lake, paving the way for future security product development.