Page 13 - Understandinging Forensic Technology Landscape

Visualization-based data analytics tools Spotfire and Power BI, to name a few, allow business
Data visualization is a graphical representation of users to analyze and visualize data much more rapidly
information and data. Charts, graphs and maps provide and with a user-friendly interface. Other tools that
an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers combine data analytics with data visualization, such as
and patterns in data. Human beings are visual creatures, Palantir, Alteryx, and IBM i2, provide users more power
with the ability to process visual data much more quickly to integrate multiple data sources, robust analytics and
than text. Data visualization brings data to life, providing dashboard reporting.
a visual representation of otherwise unrecognizable data
elements. Storybooks, which typically use a combination Visualization tools can connect to various platforms,
of words and pictures, capture the reader’s attention including local databases and cloud environments, and
to view data through different filters and via different extract almost any available structured data type. Most
graphical representations. tools offer free trials, reader versions and eLearning
courses for beginners. Generally, market-leading tools can
Dashboards that organize analyses in a mix of be accessed and purchased from the official website.
quantitative and visual representations can enhance
communication of complex data to users. Interactive Big data tools for database analytics
dashboards allow users to drill down quickly and There is so much volume and variety of electronic data
explore related details with relative ease. Proper data that new approaches for effective data handling have
interrogation techniques using dashboards helps reduce emerged. A catch-all term to simplify this phenomenon
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the time required to perform targeted analysis and is “big data.” Big data essentially refers to three “V”s:
focus the user on high-value data points. The advent of • Volume — Processing high volumes of low-density
flagging and tagging functionality, dynamic reporting data
and interactive dashboards allows the user to create and – By 2025, about 463 exabytes of data will be created
customize their own data experience. worldwide every day, which is the equivalent of

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Tableau is used for analysing and presenting 212,765,957 DVDs per day
straightforward analyses when graphs, maps and the • Variety — Harnessing different types of unstructured,
ability to drill down into the underlying data is the goal. semi-structured, and structured data
Although its strength is creating visualization, Tableau’s – Structured data — Relational data, such as airline
data preparation and data analytics are capable of reservation systems, sales transactions, and
handling large sets of data, providing quick insights ATM activity
into underlying data sources and performing powerful
real-time computations. Even when the underlying – Semi-structured data — Examples include JSON,
analyses are performed with other tools, some forensic XML and NoSQL
professionals use Tableau for graphing and illustrating of – Unstructured data — Examples include audio,
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analytic findings. images, Word documents and text messages
Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel have the capability of • Velocity — The speed at which data are collected
creating bar graphs and charts, but these tools lack and processed
the flexibility and scalability to process large quantities – 527,760 Snaps and 456,000 tweets are generated
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of data or multiple data sets. Tools such as Tableau, every minute

4 What is Big Data?, Oracle, oracle.com/big-data/guide/what-is-big-data.html, accessed September 4, 2019
5 How much data is generated each day?, World Economic Forum, weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/how-much-data-is-generated-each-day-cf4bddf29f/, accessed September 4, 2019
6 Structured v. Unstructured Data, Datamation, datamation.com/big-data/structured-vs-unstructured-data.html, accessed September 4, 2019
7 How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read, Forbes, forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-
the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#58fd56bd60ba, accessed September 4, 2019

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