Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits

Where's My 'Minority Report' Dashboard?

Why haven't user interfaces for security products taken advantage of human movement technologies?

Feb 01, 2012 | 03:43 PM | 

By Andrew Hay
Dark Reading
Ever since I first saw the movie Minority Report, I’ve been waiting on the edge of my seat for a SIEM vendor to emulate the UI employed by Tom Cruise to solve crimes. If you don’t remember the movie, or have never seen it, Cruise’s character uses an interactive screen to investigate murders that have yet to happen (a.k.a., "The PreCrime Program") using the collective intelligence of three psychics kept in a drug-induced vegetative state. All information related to the murders is provided to him in the form of video feeds, information about the location, and information about the target and suspect. The entire system was controlled using a touchscreen and what looked to be updated versions of Nintendo’s Power Glove gaming accessories.

The movie was released in 2002 -- that’s 10 years ago for those of you counting at home. Even with the invention of Nintendo’s Wii controller in 2006 and Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect controller in 2010 (not to mention the subsequent release of Microsoft’s Kinect SDK), a commercial Minority Report-like interface has yet to be commercially released.

I know that many SIEM vendors bring in college and university students for cooperative education and internships, so why not task one or two of them with building a prototype? Even if you can’t see a direct revenue opportunity for developing said prototype, you can be sure it would look great at your next conference booth for demos. Furthermore, what’s stopping some entrepreneurial-minded students from creating an entire company around providing Kinect interfacing for established products?

I guess a few questions need to be answered. Is there no need for an advanced interface of this nature? Are users happy to click through screens as they have been doing for years? Has the surfing of the Internet become so ubiquitous that all products must emulate HTML-driven workflows? Ultimately, do things need to change?

What are your thoughts?

Andrew Hay is senior analyst with The 451 Group's Enterprise Security Practice and is an author of three network security books. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewsmhay.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Security Monitoring Reports

report Fundamentals of User Activity Monitoring
Benchmarking normal activity and then monitoring for users who stray from that norm is an essential strategy for getting ahead of potential data and system breaches. But choosing the right tools is only part of the effort. Without sufficient training, efficient deployment and a good response plan, attackers could gain the upper hand.

report Does SIEM Make Sense For Your Company?
A security information and event management system serves as a repository for all the security alerts and logging systems from a firm's devices. But this can be overkill for a company that is understaffed or has overestimated its security information needs. In this report, we discuss 10 questions to ask yourself in determining whether SIEM makes sense for you--and how to pick the right system if it does.

report Monitoring Tools and Logs Make All The Difference
It's no longer a matter of "if" you get hacked, but when. In this special report, we take a look at ways to measure your security posture and the challenges that lie ahead with the emerging threat landscape.

Other reports from the Security Monitoring Tech Center:

Related Content

Security Management 2.0: Time to Replace Your SIEM?
Is it time? Are you waving the white flag? Has your first gen SIEM failed to meet expectations despite your investment? If you are questioning whether your existing product or service can get the job done, you are not alone. Read this Securosis white paper to learn how easy it can be to replace your SIEM with a next generation solution.

IT Executive Guide to Security Intelligence: Transitioning from SIEM to Total Security Intelligence
Read this whitepaper to learn how adopting a next generation SIEM solution provides security intelligence, to allow organizations to maintain comprehensive and cost-effective information security. Discover how security intelligence enables critical concerns in five key areas: Data silo consolidation, threat detection, fraud discovery, risk assessment/risk management, and regulatory compliance.

The Return on Security of QRadar: Improving Operational Efficiencies in Federal Government
In this study, IANS interviewed two Q1 Labs customers using QRadar to assess their Return On Security (ROS). The two customers were providers of service to the U.S. Government and had highly secure environments dealing with extremely sensitive data. The data yielded from the interviews showed substantial benefit to the organizations for the cost, both in money and staff time.

SANS What Works Webcast: Worldwide Retailer Boosts Privacy with Security Intelligence
A leading retailer with stores worldwide was seeking a more innovative tool to protect customer privacy and intellectual property. PCI compliance mandated log collection, but a vast number of different tools generated an overwhelming amount of log data, making it difficult for the small security team to review it effectively. The solution the company chose had to fit into a diverse network, provide intelligent reporting and offer a centralized management console.

Learn How Security Intelligence Can Help Combat WikiLeaks Stuxnet and Advanced Threats
WikiLeaks and Stuxnet have illustrated a few fundamental IT security issues that have underscored the need for Total Security Intelligence to counter advanced threats and to detect anomalous behavior. See how government and commercial organizations are using QRadar as an integral component of their IT security program to identify emerging threats based on context and situational awareness.




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports