Digital identity and security firms are coming to grips with three truisms. The leaders who embrace them will launch ahead of competitors and stay there for years to come.

1. Security and usability

Security and usability are more symbiotic than they seem. The root cause of many security incidents is poor usability. When a security control is hard to use people find ways to work around it. Thus, poor usability makes security less effective. Design helps solve this by finding new approaches to achieve better security outcomes, not only what a system looks and feels like.

2. Competitive durability

Over the last several decades old-school competitive strongholds have been erased. The new battleground for every company, in every industry, and every part of the world is the customer experience itself. Digital identity and security has been a laggard, until now. Leaders in this space realize they need impeccable user experiences not only to strengthen their security posture, but to build market share, increase loyalty, revitalize their innovation portfolio, and attract the best talent.

“customer experience itself is the only truly durable competitive advantage”
~ Gartner

3. The human side

It’s not about adding designers to your engineering-centric organization, acquiring an agency or creating a Design Center of Excellence in a hip city center. It’s about systematically creating a culture that values the human side of the screen, authentic connection, and empathy. It’s about inclusion, craft, data, cognitive psychology and engineering — having an equal seat at the table. Design teams need to understand threat models and platform architecture. Engineers need to understand design. With this, it’s about making human-centered design a keystone of the business.