McAfee Threat Submission Redesign
Phase 2
Customer Validation
Concept Generation
Workflow & UI Design
Overview
Following research and analysis of current workflows (see Phase 1), we began brainstorming to re-image the entire sample submission process. We knew it needed to be a single, unified solution powerful enough to manage all threat types and flexible enough to allow submission from the endpoint. We new it needed to be integrated into the existing tools customers used today and fit into their current process flows. And perhaps most importantly, it needed to provide transparency into the status of the threat resolution and increase time to protection.
The Vision
Build new technology. The first piece of the solution was Switchboard, a new web-service backend providing a single point of entry for all sample submissions into McAfee. Switchboard would replace the numerous submission points McAfee has today and is the foundation that will serve a series of new front-end experiences.
Increase product functionality. Next, we would build an extension into our centralized management console (ePO) that would enable customers to submit threat samples, receive real time forensic information about the sample, and deploy resolutions directly to affected computers. This extension would be the first front-end experience for Switchboard. Following the ePO extension would be integrations into other McAfee products.
Improve internal operations. Switchboard would allow McAfee Labs to globally report and monitor the submission of all sample processing, regardless of the method of submission. This would enable us to prioritize based on threat severity and prevalence, rather than customer entitlement.
Customer Validation
As we progressed, we continually validated our direction with customers and learned which workflows were most valuable to them. We conducted multiple rounds of research using progressively more refined designs. We spoke to 46 unique customers over the course of the project and shared a range of deliverables from concept storyboards, wireframes, and low and high fidelity prototypes.
Concept Generation
Results
The new solution:
Significantly decreases the time required for customers to manage submissions from hours to minutes.
Removes the “fog of submission”. Customers can now see rich information as their sample is being processed in real-time.
Decreases McAfee’s costs by enabling customers to quickly combine their own temporary protection signatures (Extra DATs) instead of relying on McAfee Support.
Using Switchboard, McAfee operations will now have real-time data on all submissions across all types (malware, false positives, spam, urls), instead of having to involve numerous employees to manually collect the data.
