Horangi Warden.
I’ve been working on Warden since I’ve joined the company, this is my main project that I’ve been up to!
Definition of Warden
/ˈwɔːd(ə)n/
a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or activity or for enforcing the regulations associated with it.
Horangi Warden
Similarly, Warden “supervises” your Cloud environment and helps to enforce regulations associated with it. Warden is a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solution that helps organizations using AWS infrastructure to configure their infrastructure according to globally recognized compliance standards, without requiring any cloud expertise.
Let me explain it in a simpler way, Warden is a Webapp that scans for vulnerabilities (errors) in your Cloud environment, it tells you when, what went wrong, and how to fix it.
Before I start talking about the features of the product, I’d like to provide you with more context, and the problem space that we’re in.
Cloud computing is becoming the next big thing.
However, cloud misconfiguration is the leading cause of cloud security incidents. Yet, businesses lack the talent and expertise to prevent them. Instead, human error is often the culprit in cloud data breaches. These incidents are costly and time consuming to recover from, and could damage the reputation of a business.
1. Lack of talent and expertise
The Cloud computing space is in the progress of being the next big thing. It only started becoming popular in 2006, when large companies like Google and Amazon began to describe this new paradigm. As it is a relatively new space and there aren’t many expertise around it, but I could say that it is growing.
2. Human error
“Nearly all successful attacks on cloud services are the result of customer misconfiguration, mismanagement and mistakes” - Neil MacDonald, Gartner.
3. Reputation
Cloud data breaches are costly and time consuming to recover from. These incidents damages credibility and reputation of a business. Examples of known cloud data breaches that were the result of human error are listed below.
Case study:
Global Cloud Data Breaches
Who is Warden for?
1. CTO
They use Warden for identifying and reporting on the organisation’s security posture. Some relevant features for them include:
Compliance Scores and Reports
Overview Dashboard
2. DevOps/ Engineering/ Security/ IT teams
They usually focus on verifying and remediating issues found in Warden. Some relevant features for them include:
Issue summary with Compliance Mapping
Integrations & Exporting Findings
Vulnerability Management
Overarching approach:
Easy to Procure, Set Up, and Use.
Beginner-Friendly
Warden helps the newest of users identify their top security and compliance priorities, with detailed remediation instructions that makes it foolproof to patch vulnerabilities and non-compliant configurations.
This aims to target the gap of businesses lacking talent and expertise to prevent cloud misconfigurations. because there are
Procurement to Findings
in 10 minutes
Warden is listed on AWS Marketplace, where you can use its 1-Click deployment to launch Warden and pay for it on your AWS bill. Choose from a CloudFormation or manual setup to connect to your AWS account. Once connected, see your first findings in minutes.
Single Pane of Glass View
of Risk Posture
Warden’s intuitive dashboard makes it effortless for CISOs and developers to get a quick overview and report of security and compliance posture over time.
Main Objectives
All these project listed below follows the main objective:
1. To make this complex CSPM solution easy to understand, easy to use.
2. Deliver context of what went wrong in a concise and clear way.
Projects I’ve been up to.
Dashboard Redesign
Feature launch: Check details page
User Research
Feature launch: Rules, Resources, Compliance
Final thoughts
I enjoyed designing Warden features from ideating to seeing the end product. Working closely with the frontend developer and together with various teams give me a wholistic view of on the problem space and user needs. Always appreciating contributions from all teams; customer success, marketing, engineering, sales, cyber operations and of course, all individuals that I’ve worked with and spoken to!