Zero Trust Reddit Comment Analysis
Role: Lead Researcher
Methods: Python/NLP, data and qualitative analysis
Impact: Resulted in specific marketing messaging, CISO webinar content, and presentations given at CiscoLive conferences
One of my favorite projects I worked on at Duo/Cisco was my 2021 analysis of Zero Trust comments on Reddit.
In order to appreciate why this was necessary, you might need to be a security person; basically, at the time of the study, “Zero Trust” (a way of approaching security) was a very big deal — at least to those insiders who were already embracing the idea. But a wise designer I worked with wondered if there was a way to find out what people really thought about Zero Trust, We particularly wanted to know what on-the-ground security practitioners might think, since they are often tasked with implementing solutions chosen by higher-ups, without being asked for input first.
To answer this question, and I followed James Mulvey’s advice and sought out three relevant subreddits. I then scraped Zero Trust discussions using Python, and did a thematic analysis of these comments to find both the sentiment, and the thematic content. Finally, I created data visualizations and a presentation showing the results.
While I can’t reveal exactly what I found, I can tell you that when I shared the study with our advisory CISOs they said they’d been hearing similar things in their own webinars. As I told them, I’m always happy to have additional sources of data before making a final conclusion!
And I can reveal that there was skepticism around Zero Trust, for several reasons: assuming that it was an impossible standard to achieve; thinking it was just a repackaging of current best practices; perceiving Zero Trust merely as a security buzzword; or (worst of all) watching other people expect that it could be achieved with a single product or service.
As a result of this study, our Product Marketing team put together a presentation addressing common misconceptions around Zero Trust, which they presented at Cisco Live in June 2022. They also partnered with our advisory CISOs to create a webinar around the same content.