The Visualization Capability

Visualization is a core capability of MITRE SAF^© because security data is only useful if human operators can understand and act on it.

Most security automation activities produce machine-readable data -- scan reports written in XML, compliance tests written in Ruby, etc. -- which are intended for consumption by another automated process. Additionally, modern full-stack security validation tends to generate mountains of data. If your team wants to prove your system is secure, they will need to validate each component, and will likely be using a specialized scanning tool for each one.

As a result, modern developers and security professionals can find themselves swimming in a sea of data that is difficult to analyze and prioritize. A fully-fledged security automation capability will allow teams to not just generate data, but translate it into something human beings can understand and act on. This is done by installing dashboarding or reporting software for ingesting data produced by your security pipeline and tuning it to filter and prioritize data based on your organizational risk.

Associated Content

MITRE SAF^© has developed the Heimdall^© security data visualization application to address these challenges. Heimdall^© is a light-weight, open-source dashboard that can ingest data from a wide variety of security scanning tools in use today.