Dynamic Graph Visualization Towards Network Security

Data visualization is a kind of way of data analyzing,which displays the underlying information of data with intuitive displays such as graphs and charts.Dynamic graph is a kind of visualization model describing time-varying data.Researches for dynamic graph visualization is important for dynamic display researching.There are varieties of research results for dynamic graph visualization,among which the key problem is how to effectively display time.There are two thoughts for visualizing time,static display and dynamic display.The former uses timeline and juxtaposed views,and the latter uses animation.Visualization for network security data is an important application area for data visualization.Traditional ways of network security visualization include network topology views,IP matrix and Treemap.They display network structure and communication status,and analyze network flow information,correlation information and network security situation.Because network security data are a kind of time-varying data,display for the variation over time for network state is very important.Therefore,the dynamic graph model can be used to describe network security data.Display methods for time in dynamic graph visualization,especially lively methods such as animation,can be used to display network security data,to help people understand the varying situation of the network.In this article we introduce an integrated dynamic graph visualization system for network security data.The main thought of the design is the thought of modularization,which divides system functions,such as data processing and configuration calculation,data display and animation driving,into individual modules,to reach the need of generality,high performance and maintainability.We introduce the design of all modules in the system,especially the support for integrated display for dynamic graph visualization.We also introduce the design for interactions,especially dynamic interactions.At last,we introduce a web-based achievement for the system design,on the basis of traditional visualization applications on web browsers.We will discuss how to develop all modules in system design in detail.Then we make a case study for the web-based system,with a set of network security data.In the case study,we specially discuss how to display detail information for animation,with the thought of staged animation which makes the display step by step to emphasize the detail information for the data variation over time.Moreover,we supply united display of multiple views and various interaction methods to achieve a good visualization performance.