The Customer Security Journey

Unlike authorization, which is guided by extensive compliance frameworks, the end-to-end customer security experience remains somewhat uncharted.

Every online service—from retail and financial platforms to social networks and B2B portals—relies on engineering teams to deliver user-friendly functionality. While these teams excel at core capabilities and product–market alignment, the customer security experience is often underserved.

Without well-established best practices, organizations often fall back on ad hoc decisions, leaving their customer's experience to poorly documented cybersecurity requirements and incident-driven engineering decisions.

Reframing Customer Security as a Strategic Priority
For many organizations, customer security only comes into focus after an incident has occurred. Lacking established reference models, smaller companies may downplay safeguards that larger organizations have come to see as standard. This gap leads to inconsistent implementations of essential controls such as multifactor authentication (MFA), session management, and responsive measures for compromised accounts.

The old notion that security and convenience are fundamentally at odds no longer holds.

Modern solutions—such as biometrics or magic links—prove that seamless customer experiences can coexist with increased security. The key is an intentional approach that guides companies along a clear path to maturity.

A Three-Lens Framework: MATO, TATO, and Convenience
Instead of viewing security controls as a monolith, this approach divides them into three categories:

1. MATO (Mass Account Takeover) Controls
   Measures designed to thwart large-scale, automated attacks—such as credential stuffing or password spraying—aimed at compromising multiple accounts simultaneously.
   
   

2. TATO (Targeted Account Takeover) Controls
   Measures designed to protect individual accounts from targeted attacks. These help secure high-value targets or customers who hold sensitive data and may be targeted directly by threat actors.
   
   

3. Convenience Features that Enhance Security
   Controls that might appear user-centric and friction-reducing but strengthen account security—such as biometric authentication or risk-based MFA triggers.
   
   

The Step-by-Step Process for Advancing Customer Security
Rather than a one-size-fits-all blueprint, this process helps organizations identify gaps, select the right controls for their context, and advance along a maturity curve that balances risk mitigation with user satisfaction.

Step 1: Map Your Attack Surfaces
Begin by identifying all points where customers interact with your organization using their identities.

This includes login pages, password-reset flows, mobile applications, and customer-service channels. These interfaces are “attack surfaces” that threat actors can exploit.

Step 2: Assess Existing Controls for Each Attack Surface
Catalog current practices and technologies.

Do you deploy reCAPTCHA for automated attack prevention? Is MFA optional or mandatory? Are session timeouts defined and enforced? This gap analysis reveals where you are strongest and where potential weak spots remain.

Step 3: Determine Your Desired Maturity Level
Not every organization aims for uniform excellence across all controls.

Consider your industry, user base, regulatory environment, and risk tolerance. A financial institution may need stringent TATO controls and passwordless authentication, whereas a social platform might focus primarily on MATO defenses and basic MFA.

Selectively aim for higher maturity levels where business and security imperatives align.

Step 4: Incrementally Implement MATO Controls
Start by addressing mass account takeover threats, which are typically the most frequent and disruptive.

Implement measures that deter automated attacks:

Step 5: Reinforce TATO Protections for Sensitive Use Cases
Once you’ve stabilized against broad-based threats, focus on targeted attacks.

Strengthen the verification processes for password resets, large transactions, or access to personal data:

Step 6: Enhance Convenience While Maintaining or Improving Security
After the foundational controls are in place, raise the overall customer experience without diluting security.

Step 7: Logging, Monitoring, and Incident Response
You can’t measure what you can’t see.

Maintain detailed logs (tokenized for privacy) to capture authentication events. When thresholds are crossed, trigger automated responses—locking accounts, prompting password resets, or notifying security teams.

Legal and communications departments should have predefined playbooks to inform customers and regulators transparently if a compromise occurs.

• Logging and Monitoring: Comprehensive, tokenized logs enable continuous oversight, anomaly detection, and post-incident response.

• Incident Response & Notification Frameworks: Predefined guidelines for informing customers about suspicious activity, advising resets, or locking compromised accounts.

• Legal and Compliance Alignment: Ensuring data privacy and regulatory requirements are met throughout the security lifecycle.

• Automation of Threshold-Based Account Locks: Triggering protective measures without human intervention when risk scores surpass defined thresholds.

Guided by a Continuous Improvement Mindset
As threats evolve, so should your security posture. Revisit steps regularly, reassessing whether it’s time to introduce new TATO controls, enhance convenience features, or refine incident-response strategies.

Over time, your organization moves from basic protective measures (such as optional MFA) to advanced protocols (like passwordless authentication), increasing security and usability.

Achieving Sustainable Customer Security Maturity

Ultimately, this balanced methodology helps your business avoid the spiral of incident-driven improvements (which are still improvements). Instead, you proactively build trust, enhance brand reputation, and ensure that, as digital engagement grows in complexity and scale, your customers remain not only safe but also satisfied with every interaction.

What to avoid

• Push-based MFA - Attackers have increasingly exploited push-based notifications by flooding users with prompts until they approve one out of fatigue.

• Opaque UX/UI for Security Features - Confusing language, buried account controls, or unclear error messages create frustration and diminish confidence. Users should know when and why a security measure is triggered, how to complete verification steps, and where to find account-recovery options.

• Excessively Strict Account Lockouts - Harsh lockouts—triggered after a few failed login attempts—may prevent legitimate users from accessing their accounts and increase the load on customer support. Account lockouts should be intelligently managed (e.g., temporary cooldowns, risk-based triggers) and balanced with user-friendly recovery options to avoid alienating the user base.

• Forgetting Edge Cases and Fallbacks - Not all users have smartphones capable of receiving biometric prompts or reliable cell service for SMS-based codes. Likewise, users may lose access to their primary MFA factor. Offer a range of authentication options and clear fallback or recovery methods for legitimate users caught in edge cases.

• Relying Solely on Password Complexity Rules - Password complexity alone—requiring special characters, periodic resets, and arbitrary length—is often both inconvenient and ineffective at stopping attacks. Relying solely on complexity rules can push users toward insecure behavior (like reusing passwords).

• Ignoring Ongoing User Education - Even the most seamless security features can fail if users don’t understand how or why to use them. Provide tips, onboarding guidance, and timely reminders to ensure customers feel empowered, not intimidated, by your security measures.