Data visualization is very much a dark art. It is very dependent upon the data you are using, what you want to get out of it, and how it is displayed. You change any one thing and you will get a completely different outcome. I have been doing data visualization during ShmooCon Labs for quite a few years now. During that time I have tried out many different approaches to visualizing the ShmooCon network. Some techniques and data sources worked well and others did not. I would like to share with you some of the techniques and data sources that I have found to work well. I also plan on doing a quick demo of some of the tools that I use.
David is a member of The Honeynet Project where he does research in data visualization, data distribution and data processing. He is also responsible for all of the shared research infrastructure that the project uses. As a day job David works for a non-profit federally funded research and development center, where he does research in network security. He has been running the data visualization effort in ShmooCon Labs for the past few years.