Great Security Starts with Great Design
Why the most effective cybersecurity products are beautiful and what a toy design book has to do with it.
Okay, folks.
Cybersecurity is full of serious tools that are seriously hard to use. When something breaks, it’s usually not the tech: it’s the config. When it’s hard to understand, people get it wrong, and that’s how security fails.
Axis did it differently. One policy UI. Simple. Clean. Beautiful, even. Not just because they cared about aesthetics, but because beauty and clarity make security better. When things are simple, people get them right — and that kind of clarity only happens when design leads, not follows.
One of our designers keeps toys on her desk and a book on the art of toys. Not just for fun, but because play sharpens perception, and perception shapes how we build. 🧸
The original team did what no one else had: combined private app, internet, and SaaS security into one unified policy UI. Now others are trying to catch up.
Our earliest data centers? Named after video game characters. We bought toys for them too. Not a gimmick. Just another way to signal joy. And joy, weirdly enough, builds better tools. 🕹️
That’s why HPE bought us for $500 million. They saw value in a different kind of culture. Now the team is growing, the product’s evolving. And I want us to keep building with that same spark.
I didn’t build this from day one. But I saw what made it different and I stayed to protect that. I almost left when the founders left. Big company politics aren’t really my thing — but I stayed because this product came from a design culture that valued beauty and function equally, and that’s still rare and valuable. That’s what I’m here to protect.
Last time I was in Tel Aviv, I left toys around the office: bouncy balls, blinky dinosaurs. Not for nostalgia, but to remind the team and myself that the Axis spirit is still here. 🦕
Great security starts with great design, and sometimes it’s the tiny dinosaur that gets it right.