VAST 2009 Traffic Mini Challenge: Intuitive analytic information presentation

As a solution to the VAST 2009 Traffic Mini Visualization Challenge, we built the Badge and Network Traffic (BNT) tool to create animations of the events taking place in the embassy. Using the embassy layout, the prox-card and web-access entries and their time-stamps, we animated color-based flagging of events. The BNT tool highlights logical anomalies occuring in the badge and network traffic data with color-coded alerts. Prior to the animated visualization, the tool analyzes data with respect to various aspects using (i) the amount of data transfers, (ii) destination IPs access patterns, (iii) employee's browsing patterns and (iv) employee's entry log into the restricted area. Any abnormality noticed is immediately reported to the user in the form of plots. In this presentation, we list out the various analyses performed and how they were utilized in the visualization. A few screenshots of the tool are provided to illustrate our analytic information presentation.