Press release

JASK Applies Science Fiction, Gaming and Latest Design Principles to First-of-its-kind Heads Up Display for the SOC

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Sponsored by Businesswire

JASK,
the provider of the industry’s first cloud-native SIEM platform, today
unveiled a first-of-its-kind Heads Up Display (HUD) for security
operations centers (SOCs) based on cutting-edge scientific design
principles and visualization concepts never before used in the
cybersecurity industry. Drawing inspiration from leading designers in
science fiction and gaming as well as the latest user interface design
concepts, the enhanced JASK ASOC platform offers maximal functionality
on a single screen. This update enables security teams to identify
top-priority threats from millions of alerts and begin rapid
investigations from the moment they enter the platform.

“Human centered design often appears to be an afterthought in the
cybersecurity industry. SOC dashboards all look the same and require
deep knowledge and steep learning curves to master. Nearly every
interface you see today is actually created from variations on similar
sets of open source code,” said Harlan Elam, lead product designer at
JASK and former UI/UX designer at Blizzard Entertainment. “What drew me
to JASK was the opportunity to build a completely new and engaging UI –
inspired by science fiction and VR gaming. Our goal was to deliver an
incredibly functional and intuitive experience by investing significant
time building relationships with analysts. The new data visualizations
and product features are the result of great collaboration with our
customers and we’re all extremely excited to see them track down threats
more efficiently than anyone else.”

The new JASK ASOC platform design begins with the Insight Radar, a
circular visualization that represents incoming alerts and events and
draws the eye inward to where focus is needed first. JASK correlates
outer-edge records into an inner ring of signals (seen as a circular bar
chart) and then leverages adaptive signal clustering to distill these
down further into top-priority JASK Insights, seen as triangles. The
right sidebar features charts giving additional information on what’s
happening in the customer environment in real time. The left sidebar
offers a high-level look at top-priority components the analyst needs to
track, including what Insights are outstanding, how many devices are
involved and what threats are still active. All of these visual
components are designed to be actionable and tell a story in a small
amount of visual space, enabling human analysts to make quick decisions
on where to prioritize and launch investigations.

The JASK HUD takes inspiration from futuristic design concepts that are
present in entertainment and gaming. In order to achieve usability with
such a compact design, JASK also worked with data scientists and applied
an arsenal of design principles such as the use of shape, color, light
and movement to evoke subconscious meanings that make visualizations
intuitive for security practitioners. These include:

  • Dark Design – As security teams spend long hours behind a
    monitor and working within their user interfaces, JASK has designed
    the ASOC platform for eye health by deploying a dark theme for night
    and daily browsing. This darker visual space puts a starker focus on
    other visual elements displayed on the screen.
  • Bullseye Layout – At the center of the screen, this design
    begins with a wide set of data on the outer ring and correlates it
    into more compact signals and Insights as it draws the eye inward to
    the most important information. Other cybersecurity solutions
    typically rely on a funnel shape, which quickly becomes unreadable
    with the vast amounts of data being processed.
  • Color & Shape Variances – Much like traffic signals and
    signs evoke intuitive meanings, JASK deployed color and shape to
    convey unwritten meaning to users. Redder objects and shapes like
    triangles, for example, are used to signal urgency.
  • Use of Space – Leveraging sidebars and tables, JASK puts all
    the information users want to see first right on the homepage. Every
    word and visual component is intentional and actionable.

“According to customers and security leaders we’ve spoken to, balancing
visualization of data and functionality is one of the greatest
challenges in cybersecurity today. It’s extremely difficult to create a
scientific visualization that is appealing but also keeps sight of the
message it’s trying to send,” said Austin McDaniel, UI software
architect at JASK. “All of the elements in the JASK HUD are the result
of tireless design interview and iteration. We worked closely with data
scientists to ensure the visual design doesn’t cause our platform to
lose its value and instead boosts its utility for analysts. The result
is a design that offers the best of both worlds – it is delivering
beautiful visualizations that are also supported with vast data,
usability and purposeful design. We’re excited about the value this
update is going to bring to JASK’s customers.”

More background on the updated JASK HUD is available at http://jask.com/the-latest-jask-release-is-here/.
JASK has also open sourced all of the new data visualization components
required to build this UI, which can be found on GitHub.

About JASK
JASK is modernizing security operations by
delivering an advanced SIEM platform that provides better visibility,
better automation and a better architecture. Built on cloud-native
technologies, the JASK Autonomous Security Operations Center (ASOC)
platform streamlines security analyst workflows by automating many of
the repetitive tasks that restrict productivity, freeing them for
higher-value roles like threat hunting and vulnerability management,
while addressing the escalating talent shortage. www.jask.com