SIEM (or SEM or SIM) vendors surely cringe when they read articles like yesterday’s NYT piece called We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint

PowerPoint makes us stupid, Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control, General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

Ouch. Although true, McMaster has himself just boiled down the problem into a bullet-ized sound bite. Hypocritical? No, the difference really is in quality versus quantity. Illustration is essential when done properly. Tufte has made this very point for many years in his books:

Keep this in mind the next time you are asked by a vendor to look at a dashboard or a report, especially for a product that includes the word management in its title (e.g. SIEM, SEM, SIM).

Does a management or presentation tool really save time or clearly illustrate the point(s) you need to know?

The best way to find out is to perform some simple tests. Prop open a door and then ask to see the alarm on the system. Run a scan, not even a stealthy one, and ask to see the alarm on the system.