FloVis: Leveraging Visualization to Protect Sensitive Network Infrastructure

Computer networks have become critical to NATO operations. Much of NATO's computer traffic runs over civilian networks, and NATO computers are accessible to a wide variety of malicious activities. The scale of the network traffic involved makes monitoring and analysis difficult, and the rapid deployment of computer systems to new areas places additional stresses on operators and analysts. We have developed an extensible suite of visualization tools, FloVis, to aid system administrators and system security officers in understanding the traffic that passes over their networks. The suite is useful for both defensive purposes as well as for evaluating and understanding the effects of offensive information operations. This paper describes FloVis and provides examples of its capabilities.