Every year, there are more and more costly cyber attacks against individuals and businesses alike. Between 2021 and 2022, for instance, global cyber attacks increased a whopping 38%, representing billions of dollars in losses. Enterprises across industries need to take measures to protect their businesses against these dangerous cyber attacks. 

Cyber security efforts can involve a variety of measures, but one that often goes overlooked is business intelligence (BI) visualization. By utilizing cyber security analytics and data visualization software, companies are better equipped to fight growing cyber security threats. 

Cyber security analytics is a cyber security approach that involves data collection and analysis to detect, monitor, and address potential threats to an organization’s IT systems. BI visualization can be an invaluable cyber security tool and part of cyber security analytics. Let’s explore what this looks like in practice. 

What is BI Visualization?

BI visualization or data visualization more generally is the process of converting data into visual representations like graphs and charts. It’s one thing to look at raw data in spreadsheets or databases, but gleaning insights from data in that format is challenging and time-consuming. Data visualization offers an alternative. 

With BI visualization, you can take broad amounts of data and make it much more understandable to broad audiences. This method makes your data analytics accessible so decision-makers can quickly read and engage with the information. Just by looking at one of these visualizations, you can notice patterns and trends in the data you might not have otherwise seen. Finding insights in your data and applying that information to your business strategies is easier with data visualizations. 

How Cyber Security and BI Visualization Work Together

You can apply data visualizations in many departments across your organization, including safety and cyber security. This way, your IT team and security professionals will be able to quickly identify anomalies and other signs of threats. Threat indicators will be visible to the security professionals in your enterprise. 

Compared to other cyber security approaches, using data visualizations allows your teams to take a step back from the minute details and focus on a connected, big-picture view of your company data. This perspective can help them understand your data landscape and pinpoint weaknesses that cyber attackers could exploit. 

Advantages of Using BI Visualization for Cyber Security

No single cyber security measure is the catch-all solution to the threat of cyber attacks. Even so, there are many advantages of using data visualization for cyber security, including the following:

Developing More Effective Cyber Security Strategies

To protect your organization, you need to do more than simply respond to threats when they appear. An effective, proactive approach to cyber security involves a strong cyber security strategy, and BI visualization software can help you develop one. You can use the software to visualize the threat landscape and pinpoint areas that you need to address in your strategy. This software will also help you adjust your strategy if the threat landscape changes (as it tends to do). 

Reducing Response Times to Threats

Recent research shows that security operations teams take more than two work days to detect and respond to a cyber attack against their organization. The longer the response time, the greater the likelihood that the attack will be devastating and costly to fix. The attacker becomes more entrenched with each additional minute it takes your team to respond. That’s why it’s so important to reduce your response time to threats with tools like BI visualization. 

Data visualizations make it easier to monitor your company data — even massive data volumes — in real time. Your team can watch for signs of incoming threats in the visualization dashboards and take action as soon as possible to counteract them. 

Locating Sensitive Data

A major concern during cyber attacks is that your company’s sensitive data is becoming compromised. In order to counteract the threat of data breaches involving personally identifiable information (PII), you need to know where PII data is stored and how it’s accessed in your business. Data visualizations can help with this. 

Through data analysis and visualization software, your cyber security team can easily query all your databases and determine where your sensitive data is stored in your IT environment. Many tools even include real-time visualization so you can always know where your important information is. This information is crucial to your cyber security efforts.  

Saving Time on Data Analysis

Even if you’re already using data analysis in your organization as part of your cyber security measures (which should be the case), data visualizations can still further improve your efforts. Compared to traditional data analysis, analyzing data with the help of BI visualization can save your team considerable time and effort. 

With the time they save on analysis, your team will be able to devote more time to counteracting threats and protecting your business. This software helps them do what they do best more efficiently and effectively. 

Protect Your Enterprise With BI Visualization Software

In the modern cyber security threat landscape, all enterprises need to take action to protect themselves. BI visualization software can be an invaluable tool in those efforts. By representing your organization’s data visually, this software helps you detect threats you might have missed and reduce your response time to keep your organization safe. Business leaders across industries are recognizing the benefits of data visualization for cyber security and utilizing this software. 

If you’re interested in protecting your enterprise and improving your cyber security efforts, Live Earth can help. Live Earth’s AI-powered data analysis and visualization platform is equipped with a powerful real-time alert system so you can respond to threats right away. The platform also includes a unified command center where you can easily monitor your data from disparate systems in one place. You’ll always know what’s going on in real time with Live Earth. Schedule a custom demo today to see how Live Earth can give you unprecedented visibility and control in your enterprise.