RUMINT.org - Teaching Yourself Network and Security Visualization

Teaching yourself about visualization

I have received multiple requests from people who are interested in learning about information visualization. The following are books that I have read (unless noted) and feel comfortable recommending:

Tufte is a pioneer in the field and his books are very readable and frankly works of art in their own right:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Visual Explanations
Envisioning Information

For a solid grounding in the area of information visualization, I greatly enjoyed Information Visualization by Spence and I have Information Visualization: Perception by Design by Ware and Readings in Information Visualization by Card on my to read list.

I like Computer Intrusion Detection and Network Monitoring by Marchette for its thorough use of visualization for intrusion detection. He also includes the statistics behind several of his approaches, but you can still enjoy the book if math isn't your forte.

The Grammar of Graphics by Wilkinson is a very comprehensive compendium of visualization techniques. Along the way, he develops a "grammar" for the techniques he presents. This may be of value to you if you are designing a system, but I like it most as a catalog of many useful techniques.

As rumint is very much about network analysis I've also found Ethereal Packet Sniffing by Orebaugh, Morris, Warnicke and Ramirez to be quite useful.

I also look forward to the publication of Understanding Intrusion Detection Through Visualization by Axelsson.

I believe the future of security visualization lies in combination with data mining, to this end I've found Data Mining Techniques by Berry and Linoff to be an excellent introduction.

Beyond the foundation material I've listed above, there are some cutting edge research papers and/or presentations available as part of the VizSEC 2005, VizSEC 2004 and IEEE IAW 2005 proceedings. Many of these researchers have done other excellent work which can be found by googling their websites.

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	Teaching yourself about visualization I have received multiple requests from people who are interested in learning about information visualization. The following are books that I have read (unless noted) and feel comfortable recommending: Tufte is a pioneer in the field and his books are very readable and frankly works of art in their own right: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Visual Explanations Envisioning Information For a solid grounding in the area of information visualization, I greatly enjoyed Information Visualization by Spence and I have Information Visualization: Perception by Design by Ware and Readings in Information Visualization by Card on my to read list. I like Computer Intrusion Detection and Network Monitoring by Marchette for its thorough use of visualization for intrusion detection. He also includes the statistics behind several of his approaches, but you can still enjoy the book if math isn't your forte. The Grammar of Graphics by Wilkinson is a very comprehensive compendium of visualization techniques. Along the way, he develops a "grammar" for the techniques he presents. This may be of value to you if you are designing a system, but I like it most as a catalog of many useful techniques. As rumint is very much about network analysis I've also found Ethereal Packet Sniffing by Orebaugh, Morris, Warnicke and Ramirez to be quite useful. I also look forward to the publication of Understanding Intrusion Detection Through Visualization by Axelsson. I believe the future of security visualization lies in combination with data mining, to this end I've found Data Mining Techniques by Berry and Linoff to be an excellent introduction. Beyond the foundation material I've listed above, there are some cutting edge research papers and/or presentations available as part of the VizSEC 2005, VizSEC 2004 and IEEE IAW 2005 proceedings. Many of these researchers have done other excellent work which can be found by googling their websites.