A Survey of Visualization Systems for Network Security

TLDR

Security visualization is a nascent field that requires novel techniques tailored to security data, yet has received limited systematic study. This paper reviews network security visualization, proposes a taxonomy of five use‑case classes, and identifies issues and future research directions. The authors compile recent works, catalog visualization techniques and data sources, and present an informative table summarizing the taxonomy. The review reveals gaps in current methods, highlights concerns, and offers guidelines for future system developers.

Abstract

Security Visualization is a very young term. It expresses the idea that common visualization techniques have been designed for use cases that are not supportive of security-related data, demanding novel techniques fine tuned for the purpose of thorough analysis. Significant amount of work has been published in this area, but little work has been done to study this emerging visualization discipline. We offer a comprehensive review of network security visualization and provide a taxonomy in the form of five use-case classes encompassing nearly all recent works in this area. We outline the incorporated visualization techniques and data sources and provide an informative table to display our findings. From the analysis of these systems, we examine issues and concerns regarding network security visualization and provide guidelines and directions for future researchers and visual system developers.