Military Spending as % of GDP – Tableau 8 Preview

I’ve been pretty quiet here lately as a result of being slammed. Part of what I’ve been doing is using the beta release of Tableau 8. I can’t post visualizations here made with Tableau 8 since Tableau Public doesn’t yet support it, so here is an image of a dashboard I made using World Bank data to compare military spending as a percentage of GDP across countries and regions.

I’ll post the real visualization, complete with the ability to filter on regions, see more data, etc. once Tableau 8 has support in Tableau Public. Until then, click on the image for a larger version.

Palo Alto Networks Threat Dashboard Example

My background is in the information security industry and I am very familiar with Palo Alto Networks next generation firewalls. Palo Alto Networks have finally got firewalls to do what they should have been doing long ago and have moved the ability to create policy further up the stack, providing a great deal of capability all the way through the application layer. They’re amazing devices that provide data nerds like me a tremendous amount of information with which to be more aware of what is transpiring on a network. Security analysis, by a competent and curious analyst, is the best security an organization can get and Palo Alto Networks firewalls provide a great deal of information to empower analysts.

Okay, enough with the marketing-slick-sounding information. I’ve created a threat dashboard utilizing some demo information from Palo Alto Networks firewalls and it is an example of how the marriage of information security data with a powerful tool such as Tableau can provide a wealth of information quickly. The value of Tableau in an information security context is the ease with which an analyst can mash and explore data.

Below is a page that has the threat dashboard. Be sure to view it with a device that has some screen real estate (smartphones won’t look good) because I designed it to be large. It could certainly be larger but, hey, this is the Internet and I can’t assume you have a 27″ monitor.

Palo Alto Networks Threat Dashboard

Tableau Public Viz of the Day – Utah Schools

Tableau Public’s Viz of the Day featured my visualization of Utah public school performance. It’s nice to be featured in such a way and by such a great website. Check it out here:

Viz of the Day: School Performance in Utah