As the Internet grows larger, the cyber-attacks get ever more sinister and elaborate. Keeping an eye on all of them is of course an impossible task. In the movies we always see mega bunkers with screens covering entire walls, all displaying ridiculous hacker related information. A company in Japan named NICT just unveiled a system dubbed Daedalus that will revolutionize the way companies and even countries can monitor cyber-attacks in full realtime 3D representation.

The system is not only a way for companies to monitor cyber-attacks from outside the company, but also what’s going on inside it. If someone receives an email with a virus for example, the system can quickly identify the IP address that is currently spreading it and shut it down immediately.

NICT recently demoed their software and were tracking 190,000 IP addresses in realtime. The visualization of this going on is in itself a sweet thing to behold. The 3D circles rotating around the globe (which is the Internet itself) represent the group or company in which they are monitoring. The software can monitor multiple entities at once and get notified, once again, via 3D graphical representation when a cyber-attack occurs. This is not only when it happens, but instantly where it happens and who the attacker is.

It’s easy to imagine a system expansion where you will be able to pull up the IP’s origin on a map, and through that, get a view of where the attacker is either residing or where he or she has routed the attack through. The system itself could save companies millions in post cyber-attack costs. If a cyber-attack is detected and shut down early enough, you can limit the damages and save yourself a whole lot of headaches as well as money and time. The Daedalus software is actually available for students as a full system if there is anyone who wants to check it out and do research with it. The system is supposed to make it hard for any attacker to launch a cyber-attack and stay anonymous. Maybe soon we’ll get less email spam. One can at least hope!

NICT Cyber-Attack 3D Monitoring System