Design Thinking in Cybersecurity (S1:E41)

November 10, 2022

Today, we are talking with entrepreneur Prachee Kale about design thinking in cybersecurity. Prachee’s impressive 17-year career spans cybersecurity and tech, business strategy, diversity and inclusion, and executive coaching. Now the co-founder of Think.Design.Cyber a founding executive fellow of Cyber Theory Institute, and a woman of color, she has coalesced her experiences to help advance the cybersecurity industry.

Full Transcript

Speaker 1:
You're listening to Humans in Tech. Our podcast explores today's most transformative technology and the trends of tomorrow, bringing together the brightest minds in and outside of our industry. We unpack what's new in physical access, identity verification, cyber security and IoT ecosystems. We reach beyond the physical world, discuss our digital transformation as a species and dive into the emerging Figital [00:00:30] experience. Join us on our journey as we discover just how connected the future will be and how we will fit into that picture. Your host is Leigh Dow, VP of Global Marketing at Identiv.

Leigh Dow:
Welcome to Humans in Tech and thank you for tuning in. Today in our innovation series and technology trends, we're talking with Prachee Kale about one of my favorite topics, design thinking. Prachee is an entrepreneur and multi-disciplinary industry professional with an [00:01:00] impressive 17-year career spanning four unique areas, cybersecurity and tech, business strategy, diversity and inclusion, and executive coaching. Now as the co-founder of Think. Design. Cyber., a founding executive fellow of Cyber Theory Institute and a woman of color, she's weaved all of her experiences to help advance the cybersecurity industry. Prachee, thank you so much for being here today to talk about your vast experience in cybersecurity, specifically design thinking for cybersecurity.

Prachee Kale:
[00:01:30] My pleasure, Leigh.

Leigh Dow:
Your resume is so very impressive. You have a master's degree in bioinformatics from George Washington University, which is all about building tech for biological research. You've written code, conducted scientific experiments on HIV viruses. You did PCR tests. Yeah, those.

Prachee Kale:
Yep.

Leigh Dow:
Think invasive viruses, the pandemic and cybersecurity. So tell us more about that journey because those are a lot of dots that maybe most [00:02:00] people would not have connected.

Prachee Kale:
Yeah, and I'm glad you prefaced it with I am an obsessive dot connector by nature and it served me very well. I have to say my master's program was one of the most meaningful learning experiences in my life and it really set the foundation for my design thinking mindset and the foundation for the work that we're doing at Think. Design. Cyber. And for the benefit of the listeners, bioinformatics blends biology, math, computer science, and [00:02:30] physics to create those software solutions. My focus of study was the correlation of human genome. It's really around the Human Genome Project that was going on at the time and its correlation with infectious diseases and specifically HIV viruses. That's where I had to do a lot of these tests, a lot of the studying around virology. So I took classes both in the med school and engineering school.

We first had to learn about the biology [00:03:00] of the human body and how the virus at the time, based on the knowledge that was available at the time, interacted with our body. And what was mind blowing to me at the time was that the virus literally changes our DNA in the way that it operates inside the host, like a human body once it's infected. So understanding how it works before we even embarked upon the possibility of doing any kind of computational solution for it was just amazing.

The highlight of this journey, I'll say, was working at NIH on the follow up of the Human Genome Project. It had just concluded I believe in 2003. And it was widely celebrated as a feat of biological research about decoding the human DNA. But I always presented it as one of the biggest wins in computational science because it pushed the envelope of not only software solutioning, computational [00:04:00] research and informational management theories, really is what I call it. It was one of the largest databases in the world at the time. It really pushed people to come together, lead, strategize, and collaborate. To watch that happen so closely was a true blessing.

I'll highlight three learnings that I wanted to share with the audience here today that has very [00:04:30] parallels to cyber. Number one was one computational scientist saw the challenge and said... And I kid you not, this is printed somewhere. People can find the paper. But he said, "This effort is working with both hands tied behind blindfolded and in a vacuum." Now who doesn't say that in cybersecurity today?

Leigh Dow:
Right. And all of us who sign up for that.

Prachee Kale:
Oh my goodness. Yes. But all of us are mission [00:05:00] driven, ambitious, brilliant, committed people who want to make the world a safer place. So the problem is highly complex but solvable if all components are addressed in it.

The second one was distinguishing the signal from the noise. This is how biologists approach solutioning and detecting anomalies to make accurate interpretation. And that's how us computer scientists tend to approach problem. Right? What's my anomaly? Forget all the stuff that looks okay. Blending both of that was a big [00:05:30] approach of blending that happened in the Human Genome Project, which again, today in cyber is very relevant.

The last most important point that is near and dear to my heart is I saw the power of empowering people to lead, strategize, and collaborate. I mean, I cannot emphasize that enough and I feel like it is so lost in this whole cyber game today. It's just unacceptable to me. But I think those were the three main things I'd like to highlight.

Leigh Dow:
I'm really interested in your degree. I love [00:06:00] the multifaceted approach that you have to take to study that. I just finished in August a week long course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business around product innovation. And what I learned was they have a d.school there and they have all of their students, regardless of their program discipline, attend that school. It's the only school at the university that all students [00:06:30] have to attend and collaborate and practice design thinking and learn that skill. And I just think that's so mission critical to our ability to find solutions and solutions that have multiple points of view and take into account diversity equations and things like that. So I was really impressed by that.

Prachee Kale:
Yeah, absolutely. And in systems theory, it's called Wicked Problems. The big SDG [00:07:00] goals that are out there and the United Nations put out there are really wicked problems. Poverty, hunger, right? Cybersecurity is another one. Gender diversity, all of these, they don't have one right way of doing it, but it's a large problem that has to then get broken down. So absolutely, the d.school is a big philosophy of design that we incorporate into the work. But we also look at the East Coast School of Design, which really focuses on the industrial solutioning side of things. So think assembly lines and scaling products [00:07:30] and things like that.

Leigh Dow:
Right, okay. I'm not as familiar with that. I'll definitely look into it though.

Prachee Kale:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Leigh Dow:
So is that how you got into cybersecurity? Is it because so many of the experiences you've had in your background are applicable?

Prachee Kale:
Like I said, I'm an obsessive dot connector, so I kind of am a design thinker too. I solve my personal problems using design thinking, which is just a habit of mine. But my love affair, as I say it, with cyber started at when I was 16 years [00:08:00] old. I had managed to grab a book on ethical hacking. I think it was at a library somewhere. And it really appealed to my teenage rebellious nature. And I was like, "Oh my God, I can get into other people's computers sitting at home at my desk or my bed?" And that was amazing. I literally gobbled up the book and only to realize later that if this fell into people with malicious intent, how bad it can be. And fast forward through many work experiences [00:08:30] in consulting as well as in the industry. I'm happy to declare it's still active and we're steady relationship going on. But that work experience has informed, I think design cyber and the work we're doing there.

Leigh Dow:
It's definitely a topic, an area of practice that's not going away and is only continuing to increase as an important issue. What's your biggest focus in the industry?

Prachee Kale:
Yeah. The biggest focus actually came out of the experiences. [00:09:00] A lot of the data we've collected and my desire to create solutions that don't exist before. At Think. Design. Cyber., we focus on problems in cybersecurity that technology alone could not solve. There are so many good technology solutions out there and yet reach rates are high, yet there is so much time, money, and resource. Some of the top issues that our audiences and our clients voice are burn and churn. The work life conflict issue, wasted [00:09:30] time and money. The big one is a sense of antagonism. This is within the corporate environment mostly, and feeling siloed and feeling ill-equipped to handle all these issues.

When we started looking at this, we're just design thinking. We're just like, what is happening? We realized that these are symptoms of deeper problems. When we really lifted up the hood and started looking at it, we realize that the problems weren't have to do with the technology [00:10:00] that is in question or the threats and attacks. It was really around methods and people in cybersecurity. And I simplified by using a stoplight analogy, red, amber, green. The red is really the methods in people obscured behind all of the technology that is available and the focus on the threats and attacks. And when I say methods, I mean processes, controls, frameworks, lines of defense and such. Then we dug into that a little bit [00:10:30] more and we realize they were borrowed from other disciplines. Cyber evolved not as a formal discipline, but just borrowed from here and there once it came out of the network hole.

A lot of these methods and example would be lines of defense in the risk management space is really unsuitable. Lines of defense is about segregation of duties. You're put in three teams, you really have three big lines, the front line, [00:11:00] the second line, and the third line. The second line is typically risk management. Front line is business and IT. And in my experience and my colleagues' experiences where that created so much antagonism and a sense of mistrust that people were afraid to collaborate across those lines.

Leigh Dow:
Oh, 100%. I had an employer who I will not name names, but I remember going through a global factory audit. I can remember [00:11:30] the lead manager on the factory side when we would get on the phone with the internal auditing team and tell all of us we weren't allowed to speak or say anything.

Prachee Kale:
Right. But think about this, right? Lines of defense were again inspired from military or sports. In both situations there are rules of engagement that are mostly followed. In cybersecurity, [00:12:00] there are no rules of engagement. What you're trying to do is create opposing teams in the same organization that need to work together to tackle an adversary that is outside the environment, aside from insider risk, right? That's another one. And that blows people's mind when I tell them, they're like, "Oh my God, I never looked at it this way." And I said, "Yes. What if I take all three of you?" This was just my idea at the time in which we've translated into our workshops is, "Get you out of your office, let's put you in a room." And these are again, brilliant problem [00:12:30] solving people, right? Technical and just amazing people to be around.

"How quickly could you come up with a solution for your company if you weren't fighting across those lines?" And most of my effort has gone into building those stakeholder relationships across lines and coaching other people in cybersecurity how to do that, so their initiatives and the company's critical initiatives could have moved forward. And the cyber people are not no people anymore.

Leigh Dow:
I really like your concept of design thinking [00:13:00] being about designing solutions that consider the human behavior pattern, not just the technology. I love that.

Prachee Kale:
And the methods. The methods really box people in. If I'm supposed to operate in an environment like this, I can't create. So it's like with all this clutter, all this noise, you're restricting me boxing my thinking. The conformist nature of cybersecurity starts to really become prevalent in that. So that really opened our minds around what those problems were. And the amber light, [00:13:30] just before I conclude this point, is the technology. There are some amazing technical solutions out there, but again, it requires leadership and strategy to really pull them together and identify in context of one's organization what is required. And cybersecurity people are not traditionally coached to do that. They're coached as specialists. They're trained as specialists in a very technical way and they don't learn those skills [00:14:00] or they do learn those skills when it's very late and that middle management and early career band of employees really lose out on this opportunity.

The technology solutions are out there, the integration of them or interoperability, if I call it. Think about a plane, if Airbus or Boeing is manufacturing a plane, they source parts from different vendors, but somehow the plane takes off, works, lands, right? It's a great experience. That's not happening in cyber either. [00:14:30] So what is going on there? So those are our three main focus areas. Then the green light is where I say is all the attention and energy is being focused as the discussion and the offensive and defensive posture around the threats and attacks. And I'm not saying that has to be eliminated. What I'm saying is when a hundred percent of your resources, time, energy, focus goes there. The red and the amber light is what is going to get ignored. But unless we solve those, no matter how many technical solutions are out there, it's not [00:15:00] going to solve cybersecurity.

Leigh Dow:
One of the things that you said that really resonates with me is on the problem solving. I think our schools, especially K through 12, are getting better at teaching students to solve problems together and collaborate on problem solving. I know for me, it sounds like we have somewhat similar personalities, one of my favorite things to do is to be given some [00:15:30] hairy problems to solve, and especially in digital transformation and those kinds of things. One of the things that I've learned about my own personality in fact is if you handed me an organization that was running perfectly perfect, I'd probably break something just to fix it.

Prachee Kale:
I am like that too. Operations for me, it's not a thing. I typically don't.

Leigh Dow:
Exactly. Same.

Prachee Kale:
Not that I'm attracted to chaos, but I like to solve problems or see things that don't exist or between the lines.

Leigh Dow:
Exactly. I'm exact [00:16:00] same way. So you talking about problem solving and collaborating on that really resonates with me. So given that, how did you get involved with design thinking specifically for cybersecurity? Because there's surely a lot of design thinking and problem solving in that equation.

Prachee Kale:
It is. What was interesting, I didn't truly think about formalizing this in Think. Design. Cyber until I met my co-founder, Brian Barnier. And he, by the way, is an [00:16:30] icon, a veteran in the cybersecurity and risk management space, financial. He's an economist as well. Done a lot of good work in cybersecurity and all of that. So anyway, so when we met through a network year and we started talking and both of us at similar observations, much like you and I. And suddenly we both realized, oh, we're using the same approach to look at this. He said, "Are you an engineer by training?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "I am too. And what are you thinking?" I said, "Design thinking." [00:17:00] And then that got us talking. What we suddenly realized was design thinking has been formally applied in so many industries, never in cyber.

Leigh Dow:
Really?

Prachee Kale:
Within a company, when we talk to people, we ask them to go check out, "Does your company have an innovation lab?" "Yes." "Does it use design thinking to create new products and services?" "Yes." "Do they look at humans?" "Yes." "Do they do that for cyber?" "No."

Leigh Dow:
Wow.

Prachee Kale:
Yeah. [00:17:30] And not only that, when they're embarking on a new initiative, something that's completely a new product, they set up their people for success. They give them training. People are trained for sales. People are trained for customer service. People are trained technically. Where does that happen in cybersecurity? It doesn't. Technology, yes. Technical skills, yes. Lots of CISM, CISSP and other certifications. But truly that for innovation purpose as a process in [00:18:00] cyber organizations doesn't exist.

Leigh Dow:
That's the second reference we've had today about economists. We had another guest that we recorded earlier today who is an economist working in an economist by training, by education, working in cyber security. My undergraduate degrees are geopolitical strategy. So certainly economics and geopolitical strategy obviously desperately need design thinking and people who can understand those macro and [00:18:30] micro elements. I think cybersecurity's like that too. You really need to be able to think big and strategically, but you also need to understand the elements that add up to solve a problem.

Prachee Kale:
Absolutely. At all levels. At all levels. Not only when you're a CISO or the next level down. And I think that is a huge opportunity. And after meeting Brian, we ended up writing a paper, which a paper, of course I come from a master's background. But [00:19:00] it won Article of the Year War in 2020. It's called Cybersecurity, The End Game. And that's where we defined all of these method and people issues that we talked about. We term use the term structural flaws. It's a common term used in systems thinking to talk about flaws that are designed in... Think about flaws in the foundation of your home. So no amount of interior design is going to help you fix that unless you actually fix the structural flaws. So lines of defense, for example, we [00:19:30] categorized it under structured flaw and that was very well received by people.

Then I happened to meet John Kindervag, who is the creator of Zero Trust, unlike many people who think Zero Trust was actually created by some professional organization. It wasn't. It was one person's brainchild. And he talks about his Zero Trust strategy, which has been interpreted many different ways, turn into a gimmick, whatever. His concept, which we call Authentic Zero Trust, [00:20:00] largely leverages design principles. And it's challenging for people because it's counterintuitive in nature because it's exactly asking you to take your focus off the threats and attacks and look inward and start that journey, which is also very parallel to coaching. Think about driving a people change. You've got to start to look inward to create any outward change in your life, in your career.

Leigh Dow:
And people change is not easy.

Prachee Kale:
And it isn't easy. Nope. So yeah, fast forward, we ended up partnering. [00:20:30] So there is a design thinking course coming out in November on the cyber.io side. We have outcomes accelerator workshops. As I mentioned before, we work with our clients focusing on a lot of the design thinking process itself for their problems. And then I was very happy to create a program for introverted cyber professionals, transforming them into business leaders, which I neglected to mention as a point in the people issue. 60% of the cyber workforce identifies as introverts.

Leigh Dow:
[00:21:00] That doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

Prachee Kale:
And the scope of that work has expanded. They literally have to go now, talk in meetings, drive change, as you said, organizational change, leadership. Speak in board meetings, management committee meetings. And that's a task.

Leigh Dow:
Are they also highly risk adverse with respect to change? So I would think people who work in cybersecurity would be very risk adverse just by nature.

Prachee Kale:
[00:21:30] I don't attribute it to the introversion. I think it's more of the conformism. We've always done it this way, so why do we need to change it?

Leigh Dow:
Yeah. Okay.

Prachee Kale:
So I wouldn't attribute that being the reason, but yes, I largely say it's conformism. This is how it's been done, why do we need to change it? It's worked so far or it hasn't worked, but there's no other way. That box thinking sometimes blocks people from looking at out of the box solutions. [00:22:00] But once you loosen them up and get them out of that mode, you really start to see some nice ideas flowing. And that's just very rewarding.

Leigh Dow:
What are the main principles of design thinking? Because I think most people, they hear that, but they don't really know what it means.

Prachee Kale:
Yes. So oversimplified version and applicable to tech and non-tech problems as well as like I said, personal transformation as well. But five main principles. Number one is problem [00:22:30] framing. And this is by far for me, the most important step in the process is framing the problem in the right way and framing it in multiple different ways before you actually go to solve it. And this is a very engaging process that I go through with all our clients in framing this problem several different ways, taking all aspects into consideration. And many times a client will wake up and say, "I don't think this is a technology problem. We've been having these [inaudible 00:23:00] [00:23:00] implementations. I admit that my solution wasn't stable in my environment." And secondly, I think it's a people issue and more people it was a collaboration issue or a trust issue. So we start to dig deeper. We start asking some critical thinking questions. We put some systems principles in there. It really starts to uncover the real problems as we call it. So that problem framing step is really important.

Number two is challenging norms and assumptions. It's around reframing the norms and assumptions that [00:23:30] led to the problem in the first place. Number three is understanding how it works. Similar to the Human Genome Project in my master's work, I really had to understand how the human body worked when the virus was in the body. The reaction, the suppression, the elevation of certain different mechanisms in the body. So that when you're solving for it, you understand the context in which the problem has to be solved. Design and implement with speed. And obviously gathering feedback as you're doing [00:24:00] that in an iterative format. And number five is continual improvement. Again, you get the feedback, you go back and make changes. So a very oversimplified way of five principles. The first three problem framing, challenging norms and assumptions and how it works can be non-linear.

Leigh Dow:
I love the idea of the problem framing. That class that I referenced earlier, one of the very first sessions that we did was around design thinking. And one of the things, we [00:24:30] went out and we did surveys with just random people at them all. Each group was tasked with coming back and agreeing on the problem to be solved. And it was so interesting to see how many of us missed solving a real problem. How many of us maybe found the problem, but then the solution had nothing to do with the problem. And [00:25:00] having somebody who really understands those pillars and facilitate you through that process is really important because it's super easy to take yourselves down the wrong path.

Prachee Kale:
Absolutely. And you really need someone to sort of rein that in. And like you said, it's very easy to go down the wrong path, but sometimes that is also the process. So one should give themselves the time to do that.

Leigh Dow:
What role does [00:25:30] data then play when applying design thinking and cybersecurity?

Prachee Kale:
Data is always playing a critical role. But in a short answer would be, for me, data is a living, breathing organism. Seeing it used in the context of my past experiences, of course, it really has to be used and applied in the right context. And for cybersecurity to really talk about the data that you have to protect from any security strategy you're applying, what data am I supposed to protect? [00:26:00] And the second, the data that is used to protect that data that you want to protect. So it's not just one sided view to look at both.

Leigh Dow:
At Identiv, we take a lot of pride in solving customer problems with the customer at the center. As we've already discussed, even with all that data, sometimes it's really hard to frame the problem that you're trying to solve and come up with a solution that is really relevant and beneficial for a customer. Explain how design [00:26:30] thinking is critical to the design success of products in cybersecurity.

Prachee Kale:
Oh, it's absolutely imperative. I did a podcast actually specifically geared to cyber vendors on Cybersecurity Unplugged several months ago. And we really talked about the importance of vendors in this ecosystem. I mean, all of you all are putting so much brain power and even emotional commitment into providing solutions [00:27:00] for the industry. But I think what also people need to appreciate that despite all of these amazing solutions being there, we are yet to solve or make cybersecurity reliable and cyber careers rewarding. What can the vendors do when they're creating those products? Not only think about the end user. Now your end user could be a SOC or it could be an anti-phishing software or something would directly impacts a person sitting in a cubicle. But to really look at the [00:27:30] whole breadth of the ecosystem in which your solution is going to be implemented.

A lot of times, and I was on the buyer end of the process for several years, what I think would really distinguish a vendor from another vendor is that contextual knowledge and to really see how this software fits, not only in the security outcomes, but in the broader business outcome. And vendors who are able to do that infuse the cyber outcomes with business outcomes will [00:28:00] absolutely stand out. And I think that's again, a huge opportunity for the success of products in cybersecurity.

Leigh Dow:
I really liked your airplane reference earlier. So I used to work in aerospace so I can relate to it. One of the things in that ecosystem, if you will, when you have a new aircraft platform is from nose to tail, almost all the components and they're not made by Boeing or Airbus.

Prachee Kale:
Exactly.

Leigh Dow:
And it requires a lot of coopetition. [00:28:30] It requires all of the suppliers. And then you have systems integrators who make those things work together, whether that's the Boeing or Airbus or someone else. So you have components, you have sub components. All of those companies, the players, the pieces and parts must work together. Must have triple redundancy, must not fail. The level of collaboration required [00:29:00] to do that I think is a very good model for the cybersecurity industry.

Prachee Kale:
Yeah, absolutely. We went a step further. We actually interviewed past NTSB officials and some pilots. My brother is a 737 pilot. He's a commercial pilot. And also the level of training he gets on the instrument itself. He knows exactly how it works because if he's in a situation, it's only his brain and his training that is going to get him an exit strategy. [00:29:30] Think about landing the plane in the Hudson. Or even if everything is going fine again, how do you distinguish the signal from the noise? That kind of training is extremely important.

One thing also, which I feel like the burnout and stress, [inaudible 00:29:44] came out with this fascinating study just I think it was published last month. I encourage everybody to read it around the personal risks that [inaudible 00:29:52] are saying is burnout and stress. They're not worried about their job or breaches. That's their largest personal risk is burnout and stress. And pilots, [00:30:00] you're familiar with the aviation industry, are trained on managing mental agility. My brother goes through trainings. His hours are capped. That is not happening in cybersecurity, yet the amount of risk, the amount of stress and what's at stake, I feel is equal if not more.

Leigh Dow:
Yeah, I completely agree with you on that. I have one last question for you. What are the main benefits of design thinking in cybersecurity?

Prachee Kale:
[00:30:30] Oh goodness. I'm going to answer this question in the context of how we are applying cybersecurity, right? Like I said, methods. Number one, unless we solve the structural flaws that are in cybersecurity as a discipline, no matter how many tech solutions we put out there, it's not going to help us gain the ground that we need to cover right now. The second is the most important one around empowering people to become business leaders, [00:31:00] to become strategists, to become problem solvers and really learn how to reach across those lines and work with each other. And I think that is going to be catalyzer that we need for really shifting our cybersecurity position in the industry today. The last one that I tell everybody also is around the no FUD approach, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that has festered in the community and almost a sense [00:31:30] of powerlessness, right?

If you're applying design thinking, you are training your mind. You're literally creating new neuro pathways, and this is what you accomplish when you're going through the coaching program. You're retraining your brain to look at solutions and not get bogged down really, or just be impeded by that fear, uncertainty and doubt. That is prevalent everywhere. But the goal is how do you hunker down and start solving, to your point, the cooperation, the collaboration that is required within the organization? It's been done in [00:32:00] different areas before. People have turned companies around. I mean, we understand how humans are made because of the success of the Human Genome Project. We can absolutely do it for cybersecurity.

Leigh Dow:
It was wonderful to have you on the show today. I really appreciate you joining us and taking the time out of your day to participate in the Humans in Tech podcast.

Prachee Kale:
Thank you, Leigh. I appreciate it.

Leigh Dow:
If you liked this podcast, please like and subscribe. We drop a new episode every Thursday.

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