VIAssist: Visual analytics for cyber defense

Analysis of voluminous computer network data has become a common practice for cyber defense, but few tools provide adequate support for cyber-infrastructure defenders´ workflow, visual exploration, IP geo-location, scalability, collaboration, or reporting. The state-of-the-art in visual analysis tools for cyber defense is typically no more than spreadsheets and primitive charting. While familiar to users, this approach ignores the human perceptual ability to identify novel patterns and anomalies when data is presented graphically. This paper reports on a visual analytics systems, VIAssist, being developed for cyber-infrastructure protection that helps cyber defenders better understand the massive, multi-dimensional datasets to protect our nation´s critical infrastructure.