Applying Information Visualization to Computer Security Applications

This thesis presents two phases of research in applying visualization to network security challenges. The first phase included discovering the most useful and powerful features in existing computer security visualizations and incorporating them into the AdviseAid visualization platform, an existing software package. The incorporation of such a complete feature set required novel resolution of software engineering, human factors, and computer graphics issues. We also designed additional novel features, such as plugin interfaces, allowing for rapid prototyping and experimentation with novel visualization features and capabilities. The second phase of the research focused on the development of novel visualization techniques themselves. These novel visualizations were designed and created within AdviseAid to demonstrate that the features of AdviseAid are functional and helpful in the development process, as well as to be effective in the analysis of computer networks in their own right