Today, many organizations face many ongoing cyber threats, making efficient security management more critical than ever.
As the threat landscape and the number of applications per customer have grown in recent years, managing security at scale has become time-consuming over time and requires users to configure each app, one by one - highlighting several key challenges:
- Each application requires individual protection settings
- Users spent lots of hours manually configuring protections
- Managing security across multiple applications was challenging, and scalability only got harder as their portfolio grew
To solve this, Radware launched a new Security Policy Template - a simple way to manage security configurations across many applications.
Early on, my team and I realized we weren’t just building another feature, but addressing a critical workflow challenge that is going to affect our users' daily operations.
Our main challenge was to introduce a completely new workflow that will replace repetitive, per-application configuration, with a scalable template-based system - while helping our users adopt it with clarity, ease, and confidence.
In this blog, I’ll share the journey behind the design challenges from a product designer’s perspective, and how we designed it to improve and simplify our users' day-to-day experience.
Design Challenges
The transition from individual application configurations to templates presented several critical design challenges:
Creating a New Template-Based Configuration Framework
This challenge was to design a new, clear, and convenient way to configure multiple applications in one place, while maintaining all familiar existing configuration capabilities and adding advanced features for managing templates.
We also had to create a new unified, intuitive visual interface that would be aligned with all protections under each template, helping streamline the user experience and improve the learning curve.
Ensuring User’s Smoothly Transaction Between Frameworks
Another challenge was helping users move easily and confidently from the familiar per-application configuration to the new template-based approach. This required a design that allowed users to view and preserve their existing per-application configurations while introducing the new powerful method of managing groups of applications in one place.
Since users had already invested time and effort in refining their individual configurations, it was critical to provide a clear visual framework that made the transition feel seamless, understandable, and safe.
Increasing User Confidence Through Flexible Rollback Mechanisms
Applying configurations to multiple applications at once can feel stressful, especially when users are still learning the new workflow. Our challenge was to find ways to increase users’ confidence and give a sense of control while using the new framework.
The Design Solution Strategy
All configurations are managed in one place - we created main templates management screen and a dedicated edit screen for each template's configurations with all protections. Users can then assign applications and apply the protections to them.
We implemented this solution through the following steps:
1. Two-Phase Implementation for a Safe Implementation and Increase Control
Applying changes to many applications at once is irreversible and overrides existing configurations on each application, it can feel risky especially when learning a new workflow. To increase user confidence, and improve the learning curve we designed a gradual, two-step process:
First Phase: Configure Protections Without Applying
Users can configure the template’s protections or copy existing application protection settings from the legacy framework into a new template without assigning applications or overriding configurations. This allows them to preview and plan template configurations in advance, prepare for future use cases, and define a migration strategy without pressure or stress.
Second Phase: Assign Applications When Configuration Is Ready
Users can apply a template’s protections to applications also only after its configuration has been finalized and reviewed, minimizing the risk of unintended changes.
To support careful and confident execution, we added a clear confirmation step that outlines the impact of the changes, what will be overridden, and any necessary user considerations.
In addition, final approval and application are only possible after reading the full explanation, scrolling through it, and actively confirming - helping ensure that users don’t make critical decisions by mistake.
2. Flexibility and confidence in configuration management
To build trust and give users a strong sense of control, we focused on providing flexibility and built-in safety tools to support confident template management.
This includes key capabilities such as:
Version Control & Rollback -
We introduced a versioning and rollback mechanism, designed to reduce fear of aggressive actions and support safer configuration refinements. This mechanism allows:
- Maintaining a history of the last 5 template versions
- Comprehensive visual version tracking for each template change
- Easily rolling back to previous configurations with one click if needed
- Creating a robust safety mechanism that builds trust in the new workflow
Providing a ”Show diff” button in each template’s version
Displays side-by-side comparison of current and previous versions configuration changes, highlighting with clear visual presentation the exact modifications across different protection types in the template.
Allows users to review and validate changes before clicking “Restore”.
Template Duplication
- Create a copy of an existing template to safely test configuration changes
- Compare different configurations without really affecting applications.
- Save time by duplicating templates and making minor adjustments instead of configuring from scratch.
3. Walkthrough Guide Assist for Smooth Onboarding
To help users understand this new template approach, we created an interactive walkthrough that automatically triggers first-time feature entry and is available for replay anytime. This contextual guidance explains how to use Security Policy Templates to effectively, and efficiently manage security across all applications. It provides points in the new configuration flow.
Design Outcomes - Simplicity from Complexity
This project highlights some important product design principles:
- Complex processes don't need to feel complicated to users
- Transparency builds trust during major transitions
- Control and safety mechanisms reduce new flow adoption resistance
- Flexibility rollback features are vital when users need to make critical workflow changes
- Thoughtful guidance is essential when changing established workflows
The shift from per-application configuration to template-based security management represents a significant improvement in how our customers protect their applications. It enables them to implement consistent security policies on scale while maintaining the flexibility they need for their unique environments.