Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards

Introduction

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring

In recent years, cybersecurity has taken center stage in the personal and professional lives of the majority of the global population. Data breaches are a daily occurrence, and intelligent adversaries target consumers, corporations, and governments with practically no fear of being detected or facing consequences for their actions. This is all occurring while the systems, networks, and applications that comprise the backbones of commerce and critical infrastructure are growing ever more complex, interconnected, and unwieldy.

Defenses built solely on the elements of faith-based security—unaided intuition and “best” practices—are no longer sufficient to protect us. The era of the security shaman is rapidly fading, and it's time to adopt the proven tools and techniques being used in other disciplines to take an evolutionary step into Data-Driven Security.

Overview of the Book and Technologies

Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards has been designed to take you on a journey into the world of security data science. The start of the journey looks a bit like the word cloud shown in Figure 1, which was created from the text in the chapters of this book. You have a great deal of information available to you, and may be able to pick out a signal or ...