Rethinking Asset Monitoring:
Designing Dashboards for Proactive Security and Compliance
Parnavi Dinkar | Arunima Singh | Ayantika Roy
Our project set out to reimagine how organizations keep tabs on those digital doorways: the servers, laptops, sensors, and switches that, together, form the nervous system of a modern institution.
The heart of our challenge?
Make change and configuration management less of a headache and more of an delightful experience.
Instead of dry checklists and dense data tables, we envisioned an interface where security and compliance were at the centre, not an afterthought.
Scope of the Project
📑
Documenting change requests, assessing impacts, and securing necessary approvals
📞
Real-time monitoring and rapid response capabilities for addressing potential threats
🖥️
Maintain configuration baselines, monitor for compliance, and manage version control to ensure secure and consistent configurations.
📊
Provide comprehensive reporting for audits, compliance checks, and strategic decision-making, maintaining detailed records of all activities
🔐
Evaluate the security posture of each asset by assessing vulnerabilities, compliance, and the asset's role within the IT environment
Stakeholder Voices & Opportunities
We began by listening and talking to the primary stakeholders: IT admins, auditors, cybersecurity leads, and even end users, who were monitoring the network on a daily basis.
Following were the emergent pain-points recorded:
“Change and Configuration are nested far away… This leads to difficulty in navigation.”
Captures a core user frustration with the current system’s fragmented accessibility.
“Fails to provide an overview… we can only know if a particular asset is compliant or not, but we cannot know how many assets are compliant at a glance.”
Shows the lack of holistic, at-a-glance compliance visibility.
“List view is primary with little to no visualization, the module makes data inference a little latent.”
Highlights why data-driven visuals matter for quick decision-making.
“Haphazard arrangement of the components. There is a lack of flow of information within the existing dashboard.”
Pinpoints the impact of poor dashboard layout on workflow efficiency.
Design Statement
To design a centralized interface that delivers clear, actionable insights into asset configuration and change processes thus streamlining workflows, enhancing transparency, and promoting effective risk mitigation and operational efficiency.
Key Considerations
Based on the research conducted and the design statement we arrived at, we found the following 3 major KPIs that form the foundation of Change and Configuration Management:
🎛️
Version Control
Tracking and managing changes to software, documents, and configuration items over time.
🔧
Configuration Identification
Systematically identifying and documenting the system's configuration items (CIs).
🔄
Change Management
Involves the configuration change cycle from request to implementation.
Initial Wireframes
Solution Highlights
Driving Change, Efficiency, and Security
Unified Asset Visibility
Developed a dashboard that provides a comprehensive, real-time overview of all hardware, software, network, and information assets, enabling teams to quickly assess status, compliance, and risk at a glance.
Streamlined Workflows
Simplified the process of managing, monitoring, and approving asset changes and configurations by designing clear, intuitive workflows that eliminate siloed data and manual bottlenecks.
Enhanced Security and Compliance
Integrated automated compliance checks, vulnerability tracking, and reporting tools to help organizations meet regulatory standards and respond proactively to evolving cyber threats.
My Contributions
Led user studies and stakeholder interviews to identify key pain points and requirements.
Developed high-fidelity screens, refining them based on usability testing and stakeholder input.
Created initial wireframes and dashboard concepts reflecting user needs and workflows.
Prepared and delivered project presentations and reports synthesizing research, design process, and outcomes, and thus, showcasing the solution’s value, approach, and impact.
Facilitated feedback sessions, gathered insights, and incorporated user feedback to iterate and improve design.