This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

APPLIED SECURITY VISUALIZATION

“Collecting log data is one thing, having relevant information is something else. The art to transform all kinds of log data into meaningful security information is the core of this book. Raffy illustrates in a straight forward way, and with hands-on examples, how such a challenge can be mastered. Let's get inspired.”

–Andreas Wuchner, Head of Global IT Security, Novartis

Use Visualization to Secure Your Network Against the Toughest, Best-Hidden Threats

As networks become ever more complex, securing them becomes more and more difficult. The solution is visualization. Using today’s state-of-the-art data visualization techniques, you can gain a far deeper understanding of what’s happening on your network right now. You can uncover hidden patterns of data, identify emerging vulnerabilities and attacks, and respond decisively with countermeasures that are far more likely to succeed than conventional methods.

In Applied Security Visualization, leading network security visualization expert Raffael Marty introduces all the concepts, techniques, and tools you need to use visualization on your network. You’ll learn how to identify and utilize the right data sources, then transform your data into visuals that reveal what you really need to know. Next, Marty shows how to use visualization to perform broad network security analyses, assess specific threats, and even improve business compliance.

He concludes with an introduction to a broad set of visualization tools. The book’s CD also includes DAVIX, a compilation of freely available tools for security visualization.

You'll learn how to:

• Intimately understand the data sources that are essential for effective visualization

• Choose the most appropriate graphs and techniques for your IT data

• Transform complex data into crystal-clear visual representations

• Iterate your graphs to deliver even better insight for taking action

• Assess threats to your network perimeter, as well as threats imposed by insiders

• Use visualization to manage risks and compliance mandates more successfully

• Visually audit both the technical and organizational aspects of information and network security

• Compare and master today’s most useful tools for security visualization

Contains the live CD Data Analysis and Visualization Linux (DAVIX). DAVIX is a compilation of powerful tools for visualizing networks and assessing their security. DAVIX runs directly from the CD-ROM, without installation.

Raffael Marty is chief security strategist and senior product manager for Splunk, the leading provider of large-scale, high-speed indexing and search technology for IT infrastructures. As customer advocate and guardian, he focuses on using his skills in data visualization, log management, intrusion detection, and compliance. An active participant on industry standards committees such as CEE (Common Event Expression) and OVAL (Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language), Marty created the Thor and AfterGlow automation tools, and founded the security visualization portal secviz.org. Before joining Splunk, he managed the solutions team at ArcSight, served as IT security consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and was a member of the IBM Research Global Security Analysis Lab.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

A great book on applied security visualization - 2008-09-24
Reviewer Rating:
Our publisher sent me a copy of Raffael Marty's Applied Security Visualization. This book is absolutely worth getting if you're designing information visualizations. The first and third chapters are a great short intro into how to construct information visualization, and by themselves are probably worth the price of the book. They're useful far beyond security. The chapter I didn't like was the one on insiders, which I'll discuss in detail further in the review.

In the intro, the author accurately scopes the book to operational security visualization. The book is deeply applied: there's a tremendous number of graphs and the data which underlies them. Marty also lays out the challenge that most people know about either visualization or security, and sets out to introduce each to the other. In the New School of Information Security, Andrew and I talk about these sorts of dichotomies and the need to overcome them, and so I really liked how Marty called it out explicitly. One of the challenges of the book is that the first few chapters flip between their audiences. As long as readers understand that they're building foundations, it's not bad. For example, security folks can skim chapter 2, visualization people chapter 3.

Chapter 1, Visualization covers the whats and whys of visualization, and then delves into some of the theory underlying how to visualize. The only thing I'd change in chapter 1 is a more explicit mention of Tufte's small multiples idea. Chapter 2, Data Sources, lays out many of the types of data you might visualize. There's quite a bit of "run this command" and "this is what the output looks like," which will be more useful to visualization people than to security people. Chapter 3, Visually Representing Data covers the many types of graphs, their properties and when they're approprite. He goes from pie and bar charts to link graphs, maps and tree maps, and closes with a good section on choosing the right graph. I was a little surprised to see figure 3-12 be a little heavy on the data ink (a concept that Marty discusses in chapter 1) and I'm confused by the box for DNS traffic in figure 3-13. It seems that the median and average are both below the minimum size of the packets. These are really nits, it's a very good chapter. I wish more of the people who designed the interfaces I use regularly had read it. Chapter 4, From Data to Graphs covers exactly that: how to take data and get a graph from it. The chapter lays out six steps:

1. Define the problem
2. Assess Available Data (I'll come back to this)
3. Process Information
4. Visual Transformation
5. View Transformation
6. Interpret and Decide

There's also a list of tools for processing data, and some comparisons. Chapter 5, Visual Security Analysis covers reporting, historical analysis and real time analysis. He explains the difference, when you use each, and what tools to use for each. Chapter 6, Perimeter Threat covers visualization of traffic flows, firewalls, intrusion detection signature tuning, wireless, email and vulnerability data. Chapter 7, Compliance covers auditing, business process management, and risk management. Marty makes the assumption that you have a mature risk management process which produces numbers he can graph. I don't suppose that this book should go into a long digression on risk management, but I question the somewhat breezy assumption that you'll have numbers for risks.

I had two major problems with chapter 8, Insider Threat. The first is claims like "fewer than half (according to various studies) of various studies involve sophisticated technical means" (pg 387) and "Studies have found that a majority of subjects who stole information..." (pg 390) None of these studies are referenced or footnoted, and this in a book that footnotes a URL for sendmail. I believe those claims are wrong. Similarly, there's a bizarre assertion that insider threats are new (pg 373). I've been able to track down references to claims that 70% of security incidents come from insiders back to the early 1970s. My second problem is that having mis-characterized the problem, Marty presents a set of approaches which will send IT security scurrying around chasing chimeras such as "printing files with resume in the name." (This because a study claims that many insiders who commit information theft are looking for a new job. At least that study is cited.) I think the book would have been much stronger without this chapter, and suggest that you skip it or use it with a strongly questioning bias.

Chapter 9, Data Visualization Tools is a guided tour of file formats, free tools, open source libraries, and online and commercial tools. It's a great overview of the strengths and weaknesses of tools out there, and will save anyone a lot of time in finding a tool to meet various needs. The Live CD, Data Analysis and Visualization Linux can be booted on most any computer, and used to experiment with the tools described in chapter 9. I haven't played with it yet, and so can't review it.

I would have liked at least a nod to the value of comparative and baseline data from other organizations. I can see that that's a little philosophical for this book, but the reality is that security won't become a mature discipline until we share data. Some of the compliance and risk visualizations could be made much stronger by drawing on data from organizations like the Open Security Foundation's Data Loss DB or the Verizion Breaches Report.

Even in light of the criticism I've laid out, I learned a lot reading this book. I even wish that Marty had taken the time to look at non-operational concerns, like software development. I can see myself pulling this off the shelf again and again for chapters 3 and 4. This is a worthwhile book for anyone involved in Applied Security Visualization, and perhaps even anyone involved in other forms of technical visualization.

Excellent emphasis on embedding security visualization - 2008-10-20
Reviewer Rating:
Last year I rated Greg Conti's Security Data Visualization as a five star book. I said that five star books 1) change the way I look at a problem, or properly introduce me to thinking about a problem for which I have little or no frame of reference; 2) have few or no technical errors; 3) make the material actionable; 4) include current research and reference outside sources; and 5) are enjoyable reads. Raffy Marty's Applied Security Visualization (ASV) scores well using these measures, and I recommend reading it.

Previous reviews offered lengthy analysis of the book, so I'll only add a few comments. I liked the author's careful organization of the book and the emphasis on embedding visualization in the reader's security work (p xiv). I appreciated many of his insights, such as the comment that tool developers usually don't know security visualization and security visualizers usually don't develop tools (p 7). I welcomed the realization that helpful security visualizations don't spring forth from the mind of the analyst beautiful and fully-formed, but may require iterations to communicate the desired information.

As far as presenting the material, I could tell how color really helped Greg Conti's book. I imagine it would have been exceptionally costly to print Raffy's 500+ page book in color, but the result is that some of the images are less engaging than they might have been. The color insert at the center of the book was a creative approach to this problem.

The only technical nit I could pick involved advice in ch 6 to send Snort output directly to a MySQL database. Using an intermediary like Barnyard is the preferred method in any installation beyond rudimentary testing.

I think ASV is a great book on security visualization, but it will also help general security practitioners. The author must gather useful data in order to visualize it, so that process should assist even those not seeing to render information graphically. To achieve a complete "visualization experience," I would bundle ASV with Andrew Jaquith's Security Metrics and a book on statistics. Inclusion of the DAVIX live CD was a great touch, since it allows users to immediately work with data and not worry about software installation. If you've already read Greg Conti's book, you'll still enjoy ASV; read Mr. Conti first then Mr. Marty.

Great Information, Boring Read, Textbook - 2009-03-05
Reviewer Rating:
The overall information gained from this book is priceless. Knowing where to look for your security information, and more importantly how to interperate that data. Raffael is quick to explain throughout the book the different places you would look for specific data. He explains the different logging details of different vendors, and why each vendor make the choices they did. He is also quick to point out how to expand reporting from the default, and most times, limited reporting of logs.

The information contained in this book is really great, and there is a ton of it, however, getting to the information you care about and need to know takes time and some serious determination. To put it bluntly, this book is extremely boring. It took me about twice the normal time I take to read a book this size. Partially due to the fact that there is so much detailed information and you will spend a lot of time flipping back and forth through to book to remember exactly why Raffael is doing something. If you are really into security, and you wish to know more about you network, security or really any general logged information, this book will guide you to it, and show you exactly what you want to know, or better yet, exactly what you don't know.

Awesome: fun to read and useful! - 2008-11-20
Reviewer Rating:
First, here is what my early endorsement for the book said (can be found on the inside cover of the book):

"Amazingly useful (and fun to read!) book that does justice to this somewhat esoteric subject - and this is coming from a long-time visualization skeptic! What is most impressive that this book is actually 'hands-on-useful," not conceptual, with examples usable by readers in their daily jobs. Chapter 8 on insiders is my favorite!"

What else do I think of the book, apart from the fact that it is awesome? :-)

First, I have to admit that I used to argue with Raffy about usefulness of visualization. I was burned by having to look at bad "visualization" tools and would take an ugly, meaningful table over an ugly, meaningless picture any day now. Thus, I was a visualization skeptic. Buy you know what? The book does justice to visualization really well, and it explains when to use it and when not to use it.

The book gives just the right amount of visualization theory, which is not onerous to read at all (unlike some other books), as well as other visualization basics. The fun starts at Chapter 4, where he covers the process from data to useful pictures. This actually explains why some visualization are useful and some are not; if you just jam data into a graphing program, there is a good chance that it would not be too useful. If you follow the ideas from Ch4, it is more likely to be useful.

Ch5 and 6 cover network data analysis: logs, packets, flows. This is what most people usually try to visualize; this book goes beyond "worms and scans" into nice visuals of email traffic, wireless and even vulnerability data (I found the latter slightly confusing). Ch7 covers "compliance", which, in this case, covers all sorts of fun things, from risk assessment to database log visualization. As I said, Ch8 is my favorite: I agree that insider tracking MAY be the area where visualization tools and approaches beat others. In Ch9, the book covers a few visualization tools; obviously, including the author's AfterGlow.

So, to summarize, get the book if you have any connection to security AND data analysis. In fact, it is very likely that if you are doing security, you'd have to do data analysis at some point and so will benefit from reading the book. And, yes, it does come with a CD full of visualization tools (DAVIX).

Includes a live CD Data Analysis and Visualization Linux tool - 2008-11-10
Reviewer Rating:
Raffael Marty's APPLIED SECURITY VISUALIZATION comes from a leading network security visualization expert who reviews all the concepts, techniques and tools needed to use visualization in network processes. From understanding data sources and choosing between graphs and techniques for IT data to auditing results and comparing tools, this is a fine recommendation for an advanced computer collection strong in security and includes a live CD Data Analysis and Visualization Linux tool, as well.

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