NetSet: A Set Visualization Tool for Network Metadata Exploration and Threat Hunting

The research and development of effective visualizations and visualization tools are necessary to achieve comprehensive cyber situational awareness, and are a growing need in cyber security [1], [2]. One common desire is the ability to quickly view and synthesize large complex datasets and understand the underlying set membership of the elements. Advances in set-typed data visualization have not yet been broadly applied to cyber data for operational use. To this end, we created NetSet, a network metadata analysis tool that leverages Lex et al.’s UpSet technique for visualizing intersecting sets [3] along with new capabilities for temporal awareness. We argue that NetSet is an effective and perceptually sound tool for set membership analysis tasks via a common data analysis use case, highlighting the need for novel set-typed data visualization techniques in cyber security.