Bringing Zero Trust Together

Cloudflare for Teams launched in January 2020 alongside the acquisition of S2 Systems. The product was built to extend the security approach of Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 consumer app to small, medium, and enterprise businesses. The initial MVP gave customers DNS filtering to protect networks from web-based security threats, but the platform quickly grew into a broader security offering covering networks, users, devices, and applications.

Rebuilding Access for Teams

One of the first major challenges was integrating Access, Cloudflare's zero-trust application security product that had existed since 2018. The problem was structural: Access lived in the core Cloudflare dashboard with a site-based model, while customers actually used it as an account-wide platform. That mismatch created confusion, and moving Access into the Teams experience required more than a surface-level redesign.

The design team started by auditing the user problems each Access feature solved. This helped determine where Access would fit under the Teams family and how it could complement the Gateway DNS filtering product. Visually, the team adapted existing design patterns from Teams to Access, but significant work went into task flow, accessibility, and overall usability rather than cosmetics alone.

Scaling Up Capabilities

During Zero Trust Week, Cloudflare expanded Teams in three directions:

  • L7 traffic inspection, adding deeper threat visibility beyond DNS filtering
  • The Teams WARP client, extending security to end-user corporate devices
  • SaaS application support, providing consistent visibility and security across third-party applications

This growth brought design considerations to the forefront. Designing for scale meant planning how each user experience might evolve across six months, one year, or three years. UX patterns needed to accommodate that growth from the start. Behind the scenes, this meant rapid iteration, extensive testing, and close collaboration with engineering teams.

Building the Design Team

Product growth required a corresponding investment in people. The original design team consisted of a single designer, and by November 2020 three additional designers had joined. Hiring was strategic: the goal was to enable each designer to contribute meaningfully while maintaining alignment on the broader Teams vision. A deep partnership between Product, Design, and Engineering was essential to that plan.

What Strategic Growth Enables

Keeping a clear vision for the product's future serves three practical purposes:

  • Collaboration: A common goal keeps the team working together rather than pursuing isolated outcomes.
  • Efficiency: A shared direction improves both quality and speed, since everyone moves toward the same target.
  • Longevity: Deliberate planning creates a foundation for a scalable product that can incorporate new experiences over time.

Building Teams from the ground up has been a process of constant alignment between product goals, technical constraints, and user needs. The platform's evolution from DNS filtering to a comprehensive zero-trust security suite reflects that deliberate, collaborative approach to design at scale.