Data Loss Prevention @ RBC
Role
Design Engineer Intern
Timeline
May - August 2025
Team
4 Developers, Product Manager
Toolkit
Figma, ReactJS
This work is under NDA ˙◠˙
If you're interested in learning more, please contact me at ariciac@andrew.cmu.edu
01 CONTEXT & PROJECT OVERVIEW
Reimagining the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Dashboard
It was the summer of 2024… when I dove into the fascinatingly complex world of cybersecurity and data loss prevention.
I joined RBC as a Design Engineer Intern on the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) team where I was tasked with redesigning the DLP dashboard.
The current dashboard was created using Tableau, and the DLP team was looking to develop it from scratch internally. Along with two developers and a PM, I served as the sole designer on the team.
02 SOLUTION & IMPACT
Before & After
Previous Experience
Overwhelming information
Difficult for users to process all at once
Inefficient navigation
Difficult for users to process all at once
Redesigned Experience
Clear hierachy
Streamlined data visualization, UI redesign
Increased usability
Revised filtering and sorting system
Impact & Scope
480+ total users
use the DLP dashboard on a monthly basis
140+ weekly users
the majority being auditors and managers
74% increased efficiency
through streamlined task completion & information retrieval
03 rESEARCH
Learning about DLP Procedures
Whether or not employees are aware of the risks of their actions, potential DLP incidents are flagged daily.
My first challenge was to understand RBC's approach to cybersecurity and data protection. I found myself surrounded by questions — "how do incidents get flagged?" "is there a set of strict rules that determine which incidents go against company policy?" "how does auditing work?" "how are incidents escalated?" "who takes care of these incidents?".
I found myself asking my manger lots of questions on the high level overview, as well as speaking to multiple people on the DLP team for more context.
Truly understanding DLP Protocols
70+ surveys
participants ranged from auditors, managers, IT staff, VPs, developers and more
18 interviews
to truly understand paint points and iterate on potential solutions
However, the best way to truly understand all the nuances when it comes to DLP protocols is to talk to a lot of people in the cybersecurity space.
Through user interviews, I strove to:
Gain a better understanding of DLP protocols
Learn how employees use the DLP dashboard
I created an affinity map to synthesize my findings and help me better make sense of the dashboard.
04 pROBLEM
The dashboard is frustrating to navigate, the graphs are unintuitive, and the experience is not user friendly
RBC is a large company, an different employees have extremely different use cases for the dashboard. Frequent users include auditors, managers, directors, analysts and many more. Additionally, users spanned many regions including Canada, the United States, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Malaysia.
The existing dashboard had 5 pages. 4/5 pages were reported by users to have seemingly arbitrary graphs that were not sorted or clearly defined.
How might we help a wide variety of users ranging from technical auditors to VP managers to understand the breadth and depth of data loss at RBC to prevent future incidents from occuring?
05 aNALYSIS
Different users have different priorities
From my user research, I determined that there were two main kinds of users: auditors and managers. Auditors ranged from first line of defense, second line, etc, while managers ranged from regional managers, business unit managers to VPs, etc. Auditors and managers have different objectives:
01 Internal auditors
Determine which incidents they need to audit
Obtain information about their assigned incidents
02 Managers (jurisdiction varies widely)
Understand the breadth and depths of data loss at RBC and within their jurisdisction
Prevent future incidents from occuring
Role: Internal Auditors
Role: Manager
We gained 4 key insights
01
Auditors don't have the necessary filters needed to identify the incidents they need to examine
02
Most mangers only seek information regarding incidents under their jurisdiction
03
Key points and summaries are necessary to supplement visual explanations
04
Access to raw data is a plus for managers, but a necessity for auditors
06 KEY DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
Layout
It was unanimously agreed upon that having 5 separate pages for the dashboard felt unitntuitive and did not enhance usability so my first step was experimenting with a single-page layout.
However, having all graphs on one page felt cluttered and required a lot of scrolling. Thus, I added a search bar, revised filtering system, and considered a log in system so that users can save their filtering prefernces..
I asked users which graphs they look at the most, and had them tell me why they used those graphs. From their responses, I was able to categorize the data into three main pages: incident volumes, incident types and outcomes, and automated blocked events.
Additional filters for Auditors
A key pain point for auditors is that the dashboard did not have built-in filters for auditors to sift through the cases they need to asses. As a result, most auditors were manually exporting data from the dashboard as a CSV file.
I spoke with first, second, and third line auditors to identify the additional filters that should be added, sorting requirements between "must-have", "nice-to-have", and "bonus".
UI Redesign to fit RBC's Design System
RBC has a comprehensive design system called RIG. I spent hours parsing through the documentation to familiarize myself with the design system and to make sure my dashboard aligns.
Data visualization & Microinteractions
I found data visualization to be especially important when designing for managers. Many managers, especially managers that oversee a larger scale, first grasp visuals before examining numbers. The existing dashboard often had graphs that weren't cohesive with one another. I sought to standardize all graphs in terms of style and general layout.
Oftentimes, graphs and data are difficult to read, so I focused on using micro-interactions to make the user interface more engaging, create moments of delight and enhance confidence.
07 rEFLECTION & NEXT STEPS
Reflecting back on the process, I learned to…
Make the most of interviews & surveys
I learned that asking open-ended questions and creating space for participants to share stories often revealed deeper motivations than surface-level responses. Pairing quantitative survey data with qualitative interview feedback allowed me to validate patterns while also uncovering nuances that shaped design decisions.
Design for a wide range of users
The dashboard had many different users with different (and often contradicting goals) so it wa sa challenge to find ways to display information for the users who need it while maintaining a good high level overview of the metrics.
I found that the following were particularly useful
Microinteractions
More filters
Exporting data for auditors
