Dashboards that actually get used¶
A dashboard that looks impressive in a demo but is ignored during an incident is not a dashboard; it is decor. Dashboards must answer three questions instantly:
Is something wrong?
Where is it happening?
How bad is it?
If analysts cannot answer these at a glance, the dashboard has failed its only job.
What good dashboards look like¶
The “smoke alarm”¶
A brutally simple view showing:
Three to five critical indicators
Clear thresholds and severity
A single screen without scrolling
Immediate visual cues for “stop everything” moments
If you need a manual to read the dashboard, bin it.
The “where is the fire?”¶
A situational board that shows:
Affected systems
Likely propagation paths
Status of containment
Alert volume trends
Hotspots and bottlenecks
This is the board everyone naturally gravitates to during a live incident.
The “posture snapshot”¶
A calm-day dashboard for spotting slow-moving disasters:
Patch coverage
Endpoint gaps
Backup health
Unusual authentication patterns
Data ingestion issues
This is where tomorrow’s breach quietly announces itself.
Design principles for dashboards¶
Zero friction: No nested menus, no tooltips, no scavenger hunts.
Human-first: Colour only where it matters, minimal clutter, no vanity charts.
Operational, not political: Executives get their own dashboard; this one is for people doing real work.
Instant refresh: If the threat moves faster than your updates, the dashboard is ornamental.
Where dashboards must live¶
On a wall in the SOC
On every analyst’s second monitor
In a pinned tab, always open
On a TV in the incident room
Dashboards that are hard to reach become dashboards nobody reaches for.