Widget Categories & Widget Types

Overview

This page provides an overview of the widget types available in Fusion for building dashboards. Each widget supports specific data categories—Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, and Audit Logs—and helps you monitor, analyze, and respond to critical cybersecurity metrics. Use this guide to understand each widget’s purpose, supported data, and how it can enhance your dashboards for real-time detection and threat response.

Charts

Area Chart

Displays quantitative data visually over time or categories using shaded areas beneath the lines.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events
- Purpose: Commonly used in dashboards to visualize cumulative data, such as bandwidth usage or event trends over time. Watch for significant spikes or dips, which may indicate network anomalies or system failures.

Bar Chart

Presents categorical data using rectangular bars.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Perfect for highlighting comparisons, such as blocked events by source or audit log activity per department. Monitor categories with unusually high counts, which may signal suspicious activity.

Bar Chart Race

Animates data changes over time, providing a dynamic view of category rankings.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Effective for showing evolving data trends, such as the growth of high-risk DNS queries or blocked IPs. Pay attention to items that suddenly rise to the top, as they may indicate emerging threats.

Gauge Chart

Represents a single metric in a speedometer-like format.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Ideal for dashboards that need quick snapshots of critical metrics like system health or SLA compliance. Look for values approaching critical thresholds, which may require immediate action.

Heatmap Chart

Uses colors to represent data density or intensity in a matrix format.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events, Blocks
- Purpose: Excellent for identifying hot spots in network activity or traffic congestion. Watch for unexpected clusters or changes in intensity, which might indicate a DDoS attack or misconfigured systems.

Line Chart

Tracks changes over time with connected data points.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events
- Purpose: Best for showing continuous trends, such as traffic throughput or system latency. Look for sustained upward or downward trends, which may indicate performance degradation or growing threats.

Pie Chart

Displays proportions as segments of a circle.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Useful for understanding data composition, like the percentage of flows by protocol. Pay attention to unusually large segments, which could highlight dominant issues requiring further analysis.

Sankey Chart

Represents flows between entities with proportional arrows.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic
- Purpose: Visualizes the movement of data or users through systems, such as flows between servers. Watch for bottlenecks or unexpected connections that may indicate unauthorized access.

Scatter Plot Chart

Plots data points on two axes to uncover relationships or clusters.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events
- Purpose: Great for spotting correlations, such as high traffic volumes tied to specific event types. Look for outliers, which may signify unusual or suspicious activity.

Single Bar Chart

Highlights a single metric or category in a standalone bar.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Used for tracking key metrics like the number of blocked events. Monitor this widget for sudden changes, which may indicate a system-wide issue or attack.

Single Value

Displays a key metric in a large, easily readable format.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Designed for dashboards focused on at-a-glance monitoring of vital stats like SLA adherence or system uptime. Be alert for values that breach predefined thresholds.

Sparkline Chart

Condenses trends into a small, minimalist chart.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events, Blocks
- Purpose: Often used for showing quick trends in compact spaces, such as a widget summarizing daily traffic patterns. Watch for trends deviating from the norm, which could indicate early signs of trouble.

Spiral Chart

Depicts data cyclically, useful for spotting patterns in recurring events or traffic surges.
- Categories: Flow, Traffic, Events
- Purpose: Ideal for uncovering periodic behavior, such as peak traffic times or recurring maintenance issues. Look for unexpected disruptions in the pattern, which may require further investigation.

Stacked Bar Chart

Breaks down data categories within bars.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Excellent for showing data composition within a broader context, such as event types by severity. Be aware of rapidly growing categories, which could indicate emerging risks.

Tables

Audit Logs Table

Lists detailed logs of audit activities, helping identify anomalies or patterns in system access and actions.
- Categories: Audit Logs
- Purpose: Crucial for compliance and monitoring user actions. Watch for repeated or unauthorized access attempts, which may indicate insider threats.

Custom Table

Provides a fully customizable format for displaying data specific to user-defined needs.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic, Events, Blocks, Audit Logs
- Purpose: Useful for advanced, user-specific use cases like cross-referencing flows with DNS lookups. Monitor for any custom metrics that deviate from expected values.

DNS Table

Displays DNS-related data such as query details or domain categories.
- Categories: DNS
- Purpose: Essential for tracking domain resolutions and spotting malicious queries. Look for unusual domains or high query volumes from specific sources.

Events Table

Summarizes events with details like type, severity, and timestamp.
- Categories: Events
- Purpose: Helps in incident response and root cause analysis. Watch for high-severity events clustering within short timeframes.

Flows Table

Lists flow-related metrics like source, destination, and volume.
- Categories: Flow
- Purpose: Vital for understanding traffic patterns and ensuring balanced resource usage. Monitor for unusual flow spikes or drops, which may indicate attacks or outages.

Traffic Table

Organizes traffic metrics into a structured format, enabling easy comparison and deeper insights into data flow.
- Categories: Traffic
- Purpose: Useful for performance monitoring and troubleshooting. Look for high traffic levels in unexpected areas, which could indicate misconfigurations or attacks.

Maps

Events Map

Geographically displays events based on their source or destination.
- Categories: Events
- Purpose: Ideal for correlating events with geographic locations. Monitor areas with frequent high-severity events for targeted attacks or failures.

Flows Map

Visualizes network flows in a geographical layout, highlighting the origins and destinations of data packets.
- Categories: Flow
- Purpose: Provides insights into traffic movement across regions. Watch for unexpected origins or destinations, which could signify malicious activity.

Exploratory Tools

IP Explorer

A powerful tool for drilling into specific IPs to investigate their associated traffic, events, or potential threats.
- Categories: Flow, DNS, Traffic
- Purpose: Useful for deep investigations of suspicious IPs. Focus on IPs with high-risk behaviors or anomalies in their traffic patterns.

Markdown Language

Markdown Widget

Allows users to create custom widgets using basic Markdown syntax.
- Categories: Other
- Purpose: Ideal for adding notes, links, or customized visual elements to dashboards. Supports text formatting, hyperlinks, lists, and more to enhance dashboard customization.