Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards

Chapter 3

Learning the “Hello World” of Security Data Analysis

“From one thing, know ten thousand things.”

Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

If you've ever tried to learn a new programming language there's a good chance you started off with a “Hello World” example that quickly introduces basic language structure and code execution. The immediate sense of accomplishment as the syntax is verified by the compiler/interpreter and the familiar two-word output is displayed becomes a catalyst for the notion that, soon, you shall have the ability to bend this new language to your will.

This chapter takes the “Hello World” concept and expands it to a walk-through of a self-contained, introductory security data analysis use case that you will be able to follow along with, execute, and take concepts from as you start to perform your own analyses. There are parallel examples in Python and R to provide a somewhat agnostic view of the similarities, strengths, and differences between both languages in a real-life data analysis context. If you're not familiar with one or both of those languages, you should read Chapter 2 and at least skim some of the external resources referenced there.

This is a good place to reinforce the recommendation to use IPython Notebooks or RStudio for your analyses and exploration because they provide very robust and forgiving environments, which means you will be much more productive compared to the alternative of writing, saving, and executing scripts within ...