On this episode of Masters of Data, we dig into one of data’s most contested formats: the dashboard. We explore why so many dashboards get built and never opened, tracing the shift from in-person SOC culture (big screens, shared visibility, immediate feedback) to the remote-work era of folders full of charts no one reviews. The conversation covers North Star metrics, the tension between practitioner and leadership dashboards, and the uniquely tricky problem of security metrics that can look green while a threat actor has quiet dwell time in your environment. Security or data engineers making the case for budget, or CISOs trying to translate posture into board-ready narratives, will find plenty here worth arguing about.
0:00:00 – Introduction
0:00:22 – Why most dashboards go unused
0:02:44 – In-person dashboard culture vs. remote work
0:04:12 – The case for North Star metrics
0:07:26 – Data trust, dashboard fatigue, and telling stories with data
0:08:32 – Practitioner dashboards vs. leadership dashboards
0:09:20 – The unique problem with security metrics (and theater)
0:12:48 – Why boards fund observability fixes but not security gaps
0:14:11 – When a buried dashboard is still a good dashboard
0:16:36 – What a genuinely useful CISO dashboard looks like
0:19:56 – How AI is making dashboard creation faster and better
0:21:13 – Wrap-up