#59 - Ethical Hacking, Information Security, and UX with Ted Harrington of ISE

Building great products is hard. Building great, secure, products is even harder. This week on Awkward Silences, we talked to Ted Harrington about the intersection between security and UX. He outlined what exactly ethical hackers do, how he challenges stakeholder assumptions about security work, and what teams can do to ensure their systems are secure.

Ted talked about…

• What UX and security work have in common
• How teams can ensure their work is more secure
• Some of the common issues and myths he encounters

Highlights

• [2:53] In both UX and hacking, bad systems are built on bad assumptions.
• [8:04] How stakeholder research helps security teams understand what data they need to protect.
• [14:10] How security teams deal with psychological acceptability in their work.
• [22:58] Making security matter to the user is a huge part of ensuring more secure practices.

About our guest

Ted Harrington is the author of HACKABLE: How to Do Application Security Right and the Executive Partner at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), the company of ethical hackers famous for hacking cars, medical devices, and password managers. He’s helped hundreds of companies fix tens of thousands of security vulnerabilities, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and more.