Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] An Obligation to Protect: Crime on MySpace and Other Social Web Sites

“It’s an almost unbelievable story. Or maybe I should say, as a parent, I’d like not to believe that this sort of thing happens. Unfortunately, it does all too often. By now, you’ve probably heard the story of Brooke Bennett who was found murdered after being abducted by her uncle, Michael Jacques.”

chicagotribune.com: Smash, grab, then sell on Web

“Craig Sherman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation, said selling online can boost the thieves’ profits. ‘When a thief sells something on a traditional street corner or pawnshop, he might get 30 cents on the dollar,’ Sherman said. ‘But if he sells it online, he gets as much as 70 percent on the value.’”

FOXNews.com: Homeland Security Dept. to Tell Employees of Heightened Alert Period

“The Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympic Games, presidential nominating conventions in August and September, Nov. 4 elections and transition to a new administration pose opportunities for terrorists to attack. Drafts of the heightened alert document were circulated in the past few weeks, and a final document is expected soon.”

The Bunker Blog: Employee Theft Increasing By 15%

“Most experts agree that approximately 30% of employees steal from their employers. 75% of those do it repeatedly. The average time it takes to catch an employee who steals is 18 months. . . . There is a lot at stake. $22 billion dollars is an astonomical figure that most of us can’t even really grasp. However, we can grasp our own losses, and we all know that those losses cost us dearly in profits.”

Evolution of Security: Leave your shoes on?

“Wouldn’t it be great to show up at a checkpoint and just when you were reaching down to untie your shoes, you heard an officer say ‘You can leave your shoes on.’”

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By the Infoglide Team

thespec.com: Charges of theft, fraud over lottery ticket

“A Mississauga man is facing fraud and theft charges for cashing in a $5.7-million winning lottery ticket that he allegedly stole from his customers at a Toronto variety store.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: Jill Dyche: Jill Piles On: Microsoft Buys Datallegro and Zoomix

“The acqusition of Zoomix, announced last week, had been widely-rumored. . . . Yesterday’s acquistion of data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro was more of a surprise. The California company is best known in data warehouse circles as a ‘Teradata killer,’ because of its shared-nothing relational architecture and low price-point.”

CSOonline: Recession Woes: What People Steal

“During economic downturns, opportunistic theft increases along with organized retail crime, says Brad Brekke, vice president of assets protection for the Minneapolis-based Target retail chain. . . . Brekke’s predecessor, King Rogers, currently head of loss prevention consultancy King Rogers International, says organized retail theft (the mob-like version, as distinct from the problem of lone shoplifters) is a constant problem whatever the economy’s condition. But his experience is that the state of the economy does have an influence on how bad it is.”

PogoWasRight.org: Louisiana latest state to reject REAL ID

“Louisiana is the latest state to reject a federal identification card program intended as an anti-terror measure that is under criticism because of high costs and possible privacy risks.”

Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds: California Lottery Nails Dishonest Retailers

“When you cash in a small lottery prize at a lottery retailer, the amount might not exactly what you were were entitled to receive. On 7/1/08, the California Lottery announced that they are using undercover agents to sting dishonest retailers, who cheat lottery winners out of their prizes. The press release on this matter pointed to a case in Morgan Hill, California where a dishonest retailer (and another individual) are being charged with grand theft of lottery tickets ranging in value from $500 to $25,000.”

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By the Infoglide Team

[Post from Infoglide] What’s in a (Company) Name?

“Matching company names in a database may seem like a simple task. HP is HP, right? Oh wait, HP is also Hewlett Packard or maybe Hewlett-Packard or Hewlett-Packard Company. And EDS is now also HP due to an acquisition. Oh, and by the way, EDS stands for Electronic Data Systems. Yikes!”

Informatica Data Quality: National Security vs. Privacy Rights - the Role for Technology

“I ran across an interesting article concerning the US initiative to broker data exchange with various EU nations. The intent is to gain greater access to information that would help in the global war on terror. . . . The technology challenge can often be so consuming that we devote scarce attention to the ethical issues involved. Data integration and identity resolution technology are continually advancing. By factoring in ethical and moral considerations into the development of the technology, we should be able to support both objectives. Privacy and security do not necessarily need to be requirements that trade off against each other.”

The Bunker Blog: Awareness Wins The Day

“How important is loss prevention awareness? Well, it could very well make the difference between a loss and a recovery. Just a few days ago, while doing some training in a store, I was interrupted by an employee who wanted to tell me that he had just deterred a theft.”

PogoWasRight.org: UK: Big Brother is Bluetoothing You

“A controversial new study that uses Bluetooth technology to track UK citizens, without their knowledge, has come under fire from privacy campaigners.”

Warrick Publishing Online: Fighting retail crime online

“As a former law enforcement officer, I know all too well the growing problem ORC presents to local law enforcement and communities. But with the rising popularity of online marketplaces, bringing these criminals to justice is becoming more and more difficult.”

Sacramento Business Journal: Report: 800 suspect auto insurance claims in Sacramento County

“Statewide, 14,623 out of 23,734 — 61 percent — of the insurance fraud referrals received by the state agency in the last fiscal year were suspected automobile insurance fraud. People who create pre-planned accidents are known as ’stagers.’ They look for high-value targets such as commercial vehicles, expensive luxury cars or vehicles owned by cities or counties. They are considered high value because of the virtual guarantee of insurance coverage.”

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By the Infoglide Team

InformationWeek: Microsoft Bolsters Data Management With Zoomix Purchase

“The Zoomix technology will eventually add functionality to the master data management technology Microsoft acquired last year when it bought Stratature and its +EDM product, according to a blog post by Microsoft group program manager Kirk Haselden, who has been leading the company’s master data management efforts. Master data management software aims to maintain a single, accurate version of data and can do things like show accumulated data on one customer from an array of data sets.”

Reuters UK: U.S. terrorism watch list tops 1 million

“About 400,000 individuals are included on the list, about 95 percent of whom are not U.S. citizens or residents, Kolton said. The watch list also includes separate entries with aliases, fake passports and fake birth dates, bringing the total number of records to more than 1 million, he said. TSA spokesman Christopher White said the agency’s ‘no-fly’ watchlists to screen travellers were ’scrubbed’ last year to remove about half of the names, leaving them with somewhat fewer than 50,000. He said Kennedy and Lewis were never on the list, and that problems they reported were due to their misidentification with names properly on it.”

NetworkWorld: Microsoft buys Zoomix to add data quality to SQL Server

“‘One of the problems we face today is that there is so much data out there, trying to figure out what’s really important — to get information, and from that information to get knowledge about what’s happening — is difficult,’ said Richard Ptak, managing partner of IT analyst firm Ptak, Noel & Associates. Vendors that provide databases, business intelligence and data-management software increasingly are integrating automated data-quality capability into those products to improve the overall quality of an organization’s data, he said.”

MarketWatch: Leading Coalition Applauds Legislation to Protect Consumers From Organized Retail Crime

“‘This new legislation is a long overdue effort to bring U.S. criminal law into the 21st century,’ said Al Thompson, vice president for global supply chain at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. ‘Organized retail crime is a serious and growing national problem. Sophisticated rings of thieves, who steal billions of dollars a year, don’t care about jeopardizing the health and safety of consumers when they sell mishandled products like diabetic test strips or over-the-counter medicines.’”

Andy on Enterprise Software: The Bulldog gets a housemate

“Microsoft generally likes to acquire software companies when they are quite small, with a dozen or two employees. In this way they can assimilate the development staff into Redmond and into the Microsoft way of doing things. . . . They opted for Zoomix, a small Israeli company which I first encountered in 2006, though they were founded in 1999. Zoomix had some quite clever marketing, claiming ’self learning’ technology as a way of making data profiling in particular more productive. In this way it could be compared to Exeros, although the technology underpinnings are quite different.”

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ITBusinessEdge: The Lowdown on Master Data Management

“Master data management technologies can be a bit confusing. . . . In short, if you’re confused, don’t be surprised. MDM is complicated. Fortunately, I’ve found a very helpful free resource that sorts it all out for us.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: David Loshin: Microsoft Buys Zoomix

“As was rumored a few weeks back (see my previous blog entry), Microsoft continues its acquisitions in the data quality/MDM arena with its announced purchase of Israeli data quality company Zoomix.”

NextGov: Federal identity programs boost biometrics market

“‘There is a little glass dome over the Washington, D.C., Beltway community,’ says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, ‘where these contractors and security folks … are absolutely convinced of a growing and mutating and metastasizing terrorist threat–and Congress, meanwhile, has granted them tremendous amounts of money to use any way they can.’ . . . For the foreseeable future, at least, the odd bedfellows will work together. Says Harper, ‘You’ll know your privacy and liberties are relatively secure when I get back to fighting with the ACLU.’”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: James Taylor: Should Enterprise Decision Management only cover automation?

“The same reader who asked yesterday’s question had a second: Do you see the terms ‘Enterprise Decision Management‘ and ‘Smart Enough Systems’ concerned mostly with the automation of decisions — which means really only covering strictly operational and appropriate tactical decisions. The term ‘Enterprise Decision Management’ to me suggests a broader definition, one that I would expect to include the management of *all* decisions in an enterprise — operational, tactical, and strategic. I guess I see SES as a subset of EDM, but I felt like they were used as synonyms in a few places and I wasn’t sure I agreed with that usage.”

Beep: Thieves grab the oddest things

“About two-thirds of retailers identified or recovered stolen merchandise (including gift cards) being sold at swap meets, on the Internet and elsewhere, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Organized Retail Crime report. A survey of senior loss prevention professionals estimated that 40 percent of the ‘new in box’ merchandise sold through auction sites was obtained fraudulently. . . . ‘It is a problem for all retailers,’ says LensCrafters’ Ingram. ‘Prices go up for consumers when there is considerable theft.’”

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[Post from Infoglide] Mind Over Data: Faster Returns from Master Data Management

“Andy Hayler recently commented on the ’scale of the problem that Master Data Management (MDM) is attacking.’”

tdwi: New Frontiers in Identity Resolution

“Identity resolution—the process of determining which data representations refer to the same entity—traditionally focused on matching name and address records from company systems. But today’s businesses face a new set of challenges:”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network: Solution Spotlight

“Robert Barker explains how Infoglide Software is used to uncover risk, fraud, and conflicts of interest and is also a useful tool within MDM applications including product information management, customer data integration (CDI), and data quality.”

The Forrester Blog for Information and Knowledge Management Professionals: Informatica Enters Identity Resolution Market — Is MDM Next?

“Now if I were Oracle, I would ask why I didn’t snatch up this relatively inexpensive company first and embed these capabilities permanently into my planned MDM fusion strategy. The coopetition between Oracle and Informatica has been fairly amicable, but that could change very quickly if Informatica voids Identity System’s OEM agreement with Oracle and enters the MDM market with a competing solution. Stay tuned — this could get interesting.”

CheckMEND blog: ‘E-fencing on eBay – lets enforce the check before you buy!

“E-fencing is increasing everyday, according to CNBC, with the help of faceless online auction sites such as eBay and we need to really start looking into ways to overcome these issues.”

destinationCRM.com: DataFlux Has the Edge in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant on Data Quality Tools

“Business Objects, IBM, Informatica, and Harte-Hanks’ Trillium Software join the SAS Institute unit in the top box.”

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smart (enough) systems: How to address decision making challenges - ownership

“You want to manage the decision so that the value of the customer, their retention risk and more is considered and so that the person who REALLY made the decision was the person who works on how to handle the best customers. Only taking control of decisions, being explicit about how they are made and using automation to deliver the decision in every channel, every time is really going to work.”

Evolution of Security: ID Update and Word on the Blog

“Now that the new ID requirement is almost one week old, we wanted to provide additional stats.”

Hi-Tech-Blog: Economy Down Shoplifting Up

“The rise in retail thefts is also being blamed on the presence of organized crime, which account for up to $30 billion in losses every year, according to the FBI. These rings of professional thieves can easily move stolen items through the Internet, where consumers go to look for deals.”

Andy on Enterprise Software: MDM Fashions

“There are some good points in the DM Review article on MDM by William McKnight. In particular, I like that he clearly highlights some issues that some parts of our industry are still in denial over:”

Homeland Security Watch: Technology Task Force Presents 7 Recommendations to Chertoff

“Before he left, Chertoff charged the HSAC membership with one more task: ‘What are the ten tasks for the next Administration to take up and accomplish over its first year or two?’ It seemed odd to charge this group with something so trite. However, he explained, rightly, that it is important that efforts be made to preserve the institutional knowledge of the Department into and through its first ever Presidential transition. I’d like to know what you think should make the top ten list. Comment below.”

Hub Solution Designs: Building a Data Governance Organization

“I’m often asked how many data stewards a company needs. A rule of thumb I’ve used for quite a while is ‘one data steward per $1 billion in annual revenue’, but of course that can’t be a hard and fast rule. Depending on the company, the degree of automation, what data quality tools are available, and the major processes around the enterprise, that number is going to vary.”

The First Post: More snooping please, we love it

“Freeborn Englishmen like nothing more than the state’s jackboot on their windpipes, says David Cox”

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[Post from Infoglide] The Importance of Identity Resolution to MDM

“In a recent post on the Hub Solution Designs blog, I wrote about the importance of integration to Master Data Management (MDM). Today, I’d like to dig into the importance of identity resolution to MDM.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network: Loss Prevention in the Retail Environment

“Leading retailers are using business intelligence to implement enterprise-wide loss prevention solutions that take into account the wide variety of factors that contribute to economic loss.”

DataFlux Community of Experts: Data Quality Strategy

“I was just creating a data quality strategy for a customer going through a conversion from multiple sources to one integrated database. While doing the conversion, new software will be introduced and propagated out to the organization. Not an easy task for any organization!”

Wired Danger Room: FBI Data-Mining Slashed After G-Men Dis Congress

“Earlier today, a House appropriators voted to pull $11 million to expand a controversial FBI data-mining project, after the Bureau repeatedly stiff-armed Congressmen and their gumshoes in the Government Accountability Office.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network: The Dirty Job of Data Governance

“Hence, this inaugural edition of the Jill Dyché Data Governance newsletter, courtesy of our buddies at the Business Intelligence Network (BeyeNETWORK.com). We’re encountering some new clients who’ve asked us to do cleanup duty on their failed data governance efforts, and that’s taught us a lot about how to deliver data governance, data management, data quality, master data management (MDM) and data integration initiatives the right way. Through this monthly newsletter, I’ll be sharing some of those hard-won lessons with you.”

Data Governance and Data Quality Insider: Data Quality Events – Powerful and Cozy

“For those of you who enjoy hobnobbing with the information quality community, I have a couple of recommendations for you. These events are your chance to rub elbows with different factions of the community. In the case of these events, the crowds are small but the information is powerful.”

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Evolution of Security: New ID Requirements Begin Tomorrow

“If you’re flying tomorrow, or anytime in the near future, you may want to make a note that tomorrow is the day the TSA enhances its ID requirements. There have been many misconceptions of the new requirements and I just wanted to attempt to clear things up a little bit. . . . Is this about control? No. It’s about knowing who is getting on the plane. It’s about shifting our focus towards people instead of items on a list. . . . If our goal is to keep bad people off of planes, and our law enforcement and intelligence partners have gone to the lengths of creating watch lists of known terrorists to keep them off said planes, we have to know for sure that each person who goes through matches the name on their boarding pass and is who they say they are.”

Andy on Enterprise Software: MDM Research

“13% of the (mostly larger) 112 companies surveyed had over 100 systems that hold and maintain customer data, which gives some idea of the scale of the problem that MDM is tackling. . . . The good thing was that plenty of companies seem to have begin measuring the costs of poor master data, and those costs are high, which should make it easier to justify master data management initiatives.”

NRF Loss Prevention Convention & Expo: Day One - General Session: The State of the Loss Prevention Industry

“Sheriff Judd and his team recently broke up an organized retail theft ring the stole an estimated $100 million worth of retail goods. . . . Sheriff Judd pointed out that many agencies think the crime ends with the single arrest. That’s not always the case, that simple shoplift may be organized retail theft. There needs to be a paradigm shift within law enforcement. Retail theft needs to be taken more seriously. Stopping retail theft can impact other crime. Your minor thieves are your major thieves. Thieves are good at what they do, it’s their industry.”

CQ.com: We Rage, Europeans Yawn, Over Domestic Counterterrorism Ops

“Ever since I attended a conference on homeland security in Paris four years ago, I’ve been fascinated by how little the French, Italians, Germans and other continentals worry about violations of their civil rights by their spy agencies. In fact, outside the United Kingdom, which invented civil liberties with the Magna Carta 993 years ago last Sunday, ordinary Europeans couldn’t care less about wiretapping, national ID cards, preventive detention and police spies in mosques, all of which have millions of Americans, not to mention the ACLU and libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, up in arms. . . . It’s likely because Germans, like the French and Italians, ran out of patience with domestic terror groups years ago. . . . ‘There is a more highly developed sense [in the United States] of what freedom means,’ he said.”

Business Insurance: Risk management not yet boardroom issue: Survey

“Risk management is not making its way into most of the boardrooms at Europe’s leading companies, a recent survey reveals. . . . Quantifying risk and demonstrating value were the biggest risk management challenges cited by three-quarters of the respondents, according to the survey.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Identity Resolution Daily - One Year Later . . . or Thereabouts

“Well, here we are feeling like the stereotypical bad husband. We can’t believe we missed our first year anniversary. I guess a couple dozen long stemmed roses are in order.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network: Master Data Management Readiness

“The selection and purchase of a core master data management system should be the culmination of a series of preparatory steps that are described in this article.”

newsday.com: NYPD arrests 15 suspected in car insurance fraud

“The 13 people were arrested Tuesday on insurance fraud and grand larceny charges stemming from at least five wrecks. Two suspects are still at large. Police say the ring targeted car insurance companies, taking advantage of a state law that entitles people involved in a crash to $50,000 worth of medical benefits. . . . Police are investigating whether the clinics were in on the scam.”

DataFlux Community of Experts: CIO Forum

“This time, I am on my way to be a panel member at a local CIO Forum. . . . Data integration, and data quality issues are going to be on the top of the list for this discussion.”

supermarket.co.za: ‘E-Fencing’ Is Growing Wave In Organized Crime

“These losses are clearly affecting retailers’ bottom lines. According to the survey, organized crime accounts for approximately $30 billion in retail losses every year. As a result, retailers are also spending more to ward off these detrimental incidents. In fact, the average retailer spends approximately $230,000 per year on labor costs, the study said. This price tag can hit $1 million a year at larger chains that are constant organized retail crime (ORC) targets.”

Data Governance and Data Quality Insider: Get Smart about Your Data Quality Projects

“With all due respect to Agent Maxwell Smart, there is a mini battle between good and evil, CONTROL and KAOS, happening in many busy, fast-growing corporations. It is, of course, with information quality. Faster growing companies are more vulnerable to chaos because by opening up new national and international divisions, expanding through acquisition, manufacturing offshore, and doing all the other things that an aggressive company does, it leads to more misalignment and more chaotic data. While a company may have a strong desire to ‘own the world’ or at least their market, they may wind up owning chaos and disorder instead - in the form of disparate data.”

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