Using Sonification to Teach Network Intrusion Detection: A Preliminary Usability Study
Miguel Á. García-Ruiz, Edwards Arthur, Raúl Aquino-Santos, Miguel Vargas Martín, Ricardo Mendoza-Quezada · EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology · 2007
Network intrusion detection, or NID (the unauthorized perpetrations of people and computer viruses in a computer network) is a complex topic to teach, because students have to study extensive amounts of data from network logs and identify intricate patterns of perpet rations, making these tasks visually tiring, among other problems. This paper describes ongoing research concerned with designing and applying sounds that represent meaningful information in interfaces (sonification) to support teaching of NID. An exploratory usability test was conducted with engineering students to receive feedback and determine if sound effects (auditory icons) and musical sounds (earcons) effectively represent information on network attacks. A post-activity questionnaire shows that most students preferred auditory icons for studying NID, and all of them were very interested in the design and application of new types of sonifications. We plan to apply our proposed intrusion detection system to a server with bio-molecular information working as a test bed.