Sentinel Visualizer is a intelligence analysis program developed by FMS Advanced Systems Groups. FMS does work in data analysis, visualization, and also creates solutions in the area of Geospatial/Temporal Analysis and Situational Awareness. Sentinel TMS allows users to input data and values to create a graphic visualization to represent patterns and relationships between people, places, meetings, buildings, organizations, and events. It uses Social Network Analysis metrics to give value to different types of data. These values are then used to rank centrality, threat level, and other key metrics within large complex datasets. Sentinel has a powerful query search that allows

Here is an example visualization map of the terrorist network behind 9/11:

I heard about this tool from a presentation from retired NSA analysts Kirk Wiebe and Bill Binney at an SRA club meeting. The software costs between $2500 and $5000 depending on the version and amount of users registered. Thankfully, they allow a 45-day free trial version that is fully functioning. I downloaded soon after the presentation by these two retired NSA analysts to play with myself. I found it to be a very cool program, and I could only imagine at how useful it could be in the intelligence community. I could see how great it would be for Law Enforcement if used to map out networks for cases. The private sector could also use Sentinel for security audits or analysis by mapping out assets and employee’s access to them.

I strongly advise anyone interested in a security related job to download the trial version and play around with it. While your future employer may not necessary use the same software, but the same ideas in approaching data analysis.

“20 terabytes of unique multi-media information generated every minute world-wide.”

— Kirk Wiebe and Bill Binney