Strata Cloud Manager: Command Center

Overview

The Strata Cloud Manager Command Center is a security management tool that offers comprehensive visibility of an entire network security deployment in one place. It was designed to address fragmented visibility challenges and deliver an intuitive, centralized experience for managing network security. By presenting a top-level visual summary of network health and threats, it lets administrators assess security posture at a glance and act quickly.

The problem

Before Command Center, users had no way to get a holistic view of their security environment at a glance. Teams were forced to search through multiple disparate dashboards and tools, making it difficult to quickly assess overall security posture. This fragmented approach meant critical issues could be missed or slow to spot.

The key UX challenge was designing a unified interface that brings together all crucial network security information — highly usable, and providing actionable insights so administrators could not only view status but quickly drill down or respond to threats.

Project goals

• True summary experience — create a one-stop summary view for network security, moving away from disjointed or overly customizable dashboards.
• Centralized visibility — provide unified insight into the entire security deployment from a single interface, eliminating the need to jump between tools.
• Improved efficiency — streamline workflows so security and network administrators can respond to issues faster.

Target users

• Network administrators — oversee network operations and need quick status checks and alerts in one place.
• Security administrators — monitor threats and policy enforcement across the network, benefiting from a consolidated threat and health overview.
• CISOs — gain high-level visibility into organizational security posture and operational health for informed decision-making.

The solution

An interactive visual summary that helps you assess the health, security, and efficiency of your network. Command Center provides a consolidated view of the NetSec platform, giving comprehensive visibility into Users / Sources, Applications, Prisma Access deployment, NGFWs, and security services in a single place.

My role

• Managed the team responsible for the design of this feature.
• Created the design vision and drove the initiative from concept to code.
• Facilitated UX research to develop data and insights, test assumptions, and guide the design toward both business goals and user needs.
• Worked closely with Product and Engineering to define actionable workflows.
• Drove awareness for the initiative, adoption, and consistency with other teams.

The process

1 · User research and discovery

The team conducted extensive research — user interviews and quantitative analysis — to understand pain points and needs. We discovered that users were overwhelmed by jumping between dashboards and wanted a true summary view instead of juggling separate, customizable dashboards for each service. Those insights solidified the vision.

2 · Concept and collaboration

In the concept phase we partnered with Observable, a leader in dashboard design, to push the boundaries of modern interface visualization. Through that collaboration we leveraged their expertise in interactive data visualization to craft an intuitive, data-rich dashboard. Early concepts focused on presenting complex security data in a clear, digestible format — ensuring even a high-level overview would be actionable.

3 · Iteration and implementation

Following conceptual design, I created a dedicated tiger team of product designers and engineers to iterate on Command Center with weekly reviews. We built prototypes and iterated on user feedback in cycles, refining layout, widgets, and workflows. That cadence maintained momentum and kept the design tied to real user needs, then carried through a clean handoff from design to development.

Innovative features

Unified overview

A single-page overview consolidating all essential network security metrics and insights. Instead of checking separate systems for firewall status, threats, user activity, or device health, administrators get everything on one screen. It became the new home page for the network security platform.

Actionable insights

Beyond displaying data, the interface provides inline recommendations and actions. If a threat spike is detected or a device is unhealthy, Command Center surfaces recommendations and lets admins act — isolating a device, investigating an alert — directly from the dashboard. Users respond to security events without switching context, reducing response time.

Optimized data visualization

The design uses best-in-class visualization technique to present complex data in digestible formats. Interactive charts, flow diagrams, and trend lines highlight important patterns. Network traffic flows and threat sources are illustrated so that critical information jumps out at a glance rather than hiding in text-heavy tables.

Impact and results

• Holistic issue identification — during development the team found and resolved a major UX issue carried over from earlier dashboard designs, where data was fragmented across views. Fixing it measurably improved usability and ensured critical information is never overlooked on the summary page.
• Primary entry point for workflows — Command Center became the most viewed page on the platform and now serves as the launch point for the majority of user workflows.
• Enhanced decision-making — with a clear, centralized overview, security professionals make decisions faster and with greater confidence. At-a-glance insight reduces noise and highlights what matters.

Command Center changed how security teams monitor and manage network security. By centralizing key insights in an intuitive summary format, it solved a real need for holistic visibility — and it stands as an example of how well-designed UX can turn a multi-dashboard ordeal into a single command post for security operations.