Effective Data Visualization in Cybersecurity

TL;DR: An overview of research in visual data analysis as applied to cybersecurity, including a discussion of challenges related specifically to visualization in network security, a synthesis of visualization techniques, and a brief conversation and critique of specific visualizations utilized in modern tools are presented.

Abstract: Effective data visualization theory and technique as applied to network security data can provide efficient and meaningful insight to massive, obtuse sets of data otherwise imperceptible to network security analysts. Given this potential impact, interest in understanding insightful data visualization in cybersecurity continues to gain momentum and draw researchers to this domain. In this paper, the authors present an overview of research in visual data analysis as applied to cybersecurity, including a discussion of challenges related specifically to visualization in network security, a synthesis of visualization techniques, and a brief conversation and critique of specific visualizations utilized in modern tools. In conclusion, the authors present a brief and open-ended proposal for further development of a flexible data visualization project to integrate these findings into a product to illustrate the power of effective data visualization to network security data.