Data-Stories
Visualizing 21st Century Data Breaches
Original Data Source: https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/data-breach/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html Author: Taylor Armerding Title:The 18 biggest data reaches of the 21st century Year: December 20, 2018 Publisher: CSO Online
The above visualization displays a horizontal bar graph, which visualizes the number of accounts compromised in the 21st century’s largest data breaches. As a student of information security, I am interested not only in how large organizations internal and customer accounts are hacked, but also in how consumers and employees respond to the theft and exposure of credentials and personal information. The CSO graphic and accompanying article explains how billions of individuals have had their personal and financial information exposed in recent breaches, however, all of the businesses displayed in the graphic remain in operation. At this time, consumers do not seem concerned about the exposure of their private information. However, if data related to cyberattacks were displayed in a different format, would the public have a different response to large breaches?
To redesign the CSO graphic, I first considered the article’s audience and how to redesign the graphic while ensuring that the data remained useful and valuable to security professionals. I considered the volume of accounts exposed in a breach to be the most significant component of the graphic, and wanted to redesign the graphic to focus on the volume of accounts have been exposed in recent years. My wireframe (displayed below) shows a sketch of how the graph could be redesigned in a packed bubble chart to easily compare company breaches by volume.
Wireframe Redesign
Upon asking classmates for a data review, both feedbacks responded that it would be helpful to include more information about what account information was disclosed in the account breaches. The user feedback was not derived from security professionals, yet both accounts asked for more information to better understand and compare the nature of the cyberattacks. If consumers are going to respond to data breaches, it is imperative that they understand how their accounts are affected by cyberattacks, and displaying the data in a clear and concise format may be the first step. This feedback resulted in the interactive redesign that includes the company, the year of the breach, and a brief description of how each account was affected.
Similar to the wireframe, the redesign displays a packed bubble chart. Unlike the original design, the companies are not arranged in chronological order, but rather each company is represented by a bubble scaled to display the volume of affected accounts. These bubbles are grouped in a color scheme, which correspond to the year of occurence. For cybersecurity professionals, this grouping may provide some insight into cyberattack trends. Due to the user feedback, each bubble includes a short description of the breach. The CSO graphic was followed by short descripters of each attack, I wanted the graph to be more interactive so the reader would be able to instantly gain more context about the details of each breach. I attempted to show how a single graphic can display pertinent cyberattack information, and may replace the need for a long article and technical description of each attack.
Non-Interactive Version:
