Building Secure Products: An Introduction to Cybersecurity for Product Leaders

Back in the day, cybersecurity was the exclusive domain of your IT team. 

Today, that’s changed. Thanks to the widespread adoption of digital technology, security has become everyone’s responsibility. Whether you’re in human resources, marketing or product, the importance of implementing and maintaining security best practices can’t be overstated.

In fact, doing so (or choosing not to) can make or break your business. 

Last year alone, data breaches cost companies almost $4 million on average, according to a recent report from Ponemon. And if you think that’s a hefty price to pay, imagine the damage a security incident could have on your reputation… Actually, scratch that. You don’t have to imagine. Just take a look at Facebook.

The good news? As a product leader, you can have an outsize impact on your company’s cybersecurity posture. All it takes is a security-first mindset throughout the product development lifecycle. By adopting this mindset, you can start designing and building products with security baked-in.

And in case you’re skeptical, consider some of the benefits that come with a security-first approach:

• Products built with security top of mind are, well, more secure—which is a benefit in itself.
• Products that are more secure build and maintain customer trust. In fact, built-in security can be a huge market differentiator for your business. 
• If you’re implementing security best practices throughout the development process, you can make your products audit-proof. This will save you time and money when your business begins conducting security audits like SOC 2 further down the road. This might not be a priority now, but it certainly will be. That’s because compliance provides security assurance and demonstrates you are trustworthy.

Which brings us to the objective of this series. In Building Secure Products, we offer practical advice to help you adopt a security-first mindset and integrate best practices into your process. That way, you can start reaping some of those benefits we mentioned above.

Okay, now to get started. 

Who’s This Series For?

You, the intrepid product manager or leader. More broadly, Building Secure Products will help anyone in product development become more savvy about cybersecurity. 

We’ve kept the advice simple and actionable, so you can start improving your security posture right now.

Building Secure Products: What We Cover

This three-part series isn’t meant to be exhaustive. That would be impossible, given its limited scope. However, it should help you navigate the sometimes-confusing security landscape and arm you with information you can actually use right now. 

We provide a breakdown of each article below and what you can expect.

Why Does Information-Driven Product Design Matter?

Here, we explore the paradigm shift that’s transforming how products are being designed and built today. In the old worldview, cybersecurity was secondary. An afterthought, if you will. But not anymore. 

Product managers are looking at ways to integrate security into each phase of the development lifecycle, from strategy to execution, and they’re doing so right from the start. We’ve collected what they’ve learned all in one place, so that you can make the most of it.

The Top 3 Security Tips You Don’t Want to Ignore During Product Development

If there were just three things you could do today to make your product more secure, here’s what they’d be—from de-risking how your product collects and uses customer data to implementing the right access controls via internal tools. In this article, we help you cover the basics and set you up with everything you need to get started.   

The Future of Security-Driven Product Design

We look at the trust crisis, how it’s impacting businesses and what product teams can do to create more valuable products now and in the future. The regulatory landscape is rapidly changing, and if businesses want to demonstrate they’re keeping pace and putting customer security first, they’ll need to continuously prove compliance. We wrap up our series with final thoughts that’ll help you do just that.