Norse is a company that monitors world-wide internet traffic, identifies and tracks high-risk IP addresses, and sells this information in the cyber-security market.  They also maintain a web page that lets you to watch cyber attacks all over the world in real time. The still picture above doesn’t begin to do it justice.  You can check out the real-time map here.

What you see in the map is just a small fraction of the data Norse tracks in real time. Their website claims they monitor over 200 terabytes a day of risk traffic and log approximately 50K attacks every second.

Norse gathers attack data through a network of over 8 million sensors that are designed to mimic approximately 6,000 different types of hardware and software platforms that are commonly subjected to cyber attacks.  They maintain 167 data centers around the world and have over 1 billion risk-assessed IP addresses in their database each of which is scored on 1,500 risk factors. They typically identify 10K new “species” of malware every day.

Given the sheer amount of attack data Norse is processing every second, 24/7, the real-time data they show on their website is severely limited and the real-time map is little more than a toy.  It’s a very cool toy, though.