User journeys show how customers succeed. Attacker journeys show how adversaries do. In Inverted Podcast #3, the hosts introduce critical attacker journeys as a core tool for inverted product management in security, fraud, and abuse prevention.
They break down stages such as reconnaissance, execution, and cleanup, how to use those maps when building security software, advice for new security product people, and how attacker journeys inform strategy. The episode also touches passkeys and why a clear passwordless story matters.
About this episode
Hosts walk through attacker journeys as the inverted counterpart to critical user journeys. The discussion is practical for security PMs building identity, fraud, and abuse defenses, with a closing look at passkeys and World Passkey Day.
Key takeaways
- Treat attacker journeys as first-class product artifacts, parallel to critical user journeys.
- Map reconnaissance, execution, and post-attack cleanup to find leverage points for defense.
- Reducing user friction and raising attacker friction are different design problems.
- Attacker journeys help prioritize features for identity protection and account compromise defense.
- New security PMs should partner with threat intel, red teams, and frontline ops to ground journeys in reality.
- Passkeys and passwordless flows change both user and attacker paths. Tell a coherent story.
Topics covered
- What an attacker journey is and why PMs need it
- Using attacker journeys to develop security software
- Advice for new product security people
- Attacker journeys as inputs to security strategy
- Identity protection and account compromise examples
- Passkeys and World Passkey Day
Chapters
00:00 Introductions
01:19 What is an Attacker Journey?
12:10 How can you use the Critical Attacker Journey to develop security software?
21:10 Advice for new product security people on how to use Attacker Journeys
26:30 How can Critical Attacker Journeys be used for security strategy?
32:02 Passkeys and World Passkey Day
For inverted product managers, the practical test is whether your roadmap reduces measurable damage for real users without inventing vanity metrics. Use the chapters above to jump to the sections most relevant to your team, then bring one concrete change into your next planning cycle.
Critical attacker journeys also help communication. When engineering, trust and safety, and leadership share the same map of how an adversary moves, debates about friction and feature priority become concrete. Pair each journey step with a detection, a cost injection, or an elimination of the path entirely, and you have a roadmap artifact inverted teams can reuse across identity, fraud, and abuse programs.
FAQ
What is a critical attacker journey?
It is a structured map of how an adversary researches, executes, and cleans up an attack against your product or users. Inverted PMs use it the way growth PMs use critical user journeys.
How do attacker journeys change the roadmap?
They surface steps where cost, detection, or friction most disrupt abuse, so you invest where attacker ROI breaks rather than only where user delight rises.
Who should watch this episode?
Security and identity PMs, fraud and trust-and-safety leads, and cybersecurity leaders who need a shared product language for threat modeling.
Related on Inverted PM
- Podcast #1: Intro to Inverted Product Management
- Podcast #4: Damage as the Ultimate Metric
- Podcast #6: Using Cost to Defend Against Abuse
- Podcast #8: Social Engineering
- Meet the hosts
- All Inverted Podcast episodes
Connect with the hosts and guests on the video or on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.
🎧 Find the Inverted Podcast on LinkedIn, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music/Audible, iHeartRadio, or invertedpm.com.
Explore more
Browse all Inverted Podcast episodes, read the blog, or meet the hosts.
Related: Episode 2 – The Invisible Line · Episode 6 – Cost to Defend Against Abuse