Identity Resolution Daily

By Mike Betron, Infoglide Director of Marketing

Several years ago, identity resolution was almost exclusively tied to detecting fraud. Over time, the “identity” of identity resolution has continued to evolve and broaden. Many areas of commerce are discovering that efficiency can be improved dramatically when you have a clear picture of the individuals you’re dealing with and their social network.

Of course, identity resolution is not the only way to gain that efficiency. Another method, called preference profiling, self-learns by monitoring the actions of an individual or client. One example is Google News. The kind of preference profiling that Google captures and saves, for instance, is based on my behavior. That information is then used to improve my online experience and make better use of my time by employing search techniques that “know” what topics I’m interested in based on my past behavior. In my case, for example, Google News is more likely serve up sports stories than fashion articles when I ask for the latest news.

For the most part, preference profiling and other techniques besides identity resolution operate on the premise that individuals will continue to act as they have acted in the past. If this weren’t true, companies like Google wouldn’t be in business, but we’re discovering the limitations of working only with historical data. Sometimes people change and sometimes they aren’t forthcoming about their associations for various reasons.

Commercial systems, including those employed in financial services industries, are becoming “smarter.” By incorporating identity resolution technology, they enhance existing historical data systems with information drawn from a wide variety of dynamic data sources (e.g., social media). Providing a real-time “360 view” of an individual and his/her associations is improving daily business decisions at many leading companies.

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[Post from Infoglide] The Talk of the ACFE Conference

“The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) held its annual conference and exhibition in Washington, DC this week.  Through the keynote address and the plethora of wonderful speakers, one message became loud and clear - fraudsters are becoming more and more creative in finding ways to circumvent your policies…”

A Software Insider’s Point of View: Research Report: Rethink Your Next Generation Business Intelligence Strategy

“A confluence of changing business requirements and on-going vendor consolidation leads many organizations to rethink their business intelligence (BI) strategies… Ensure the systems supports multi-channel heterogeneous data sources.  Do not stay dependent on ERP systems for primary sources of data.  Expect a rapidly changing business environment that rewards flexibility.”

Center for Investigative Reporting: Ex-cop says makers of data-mining software must recognize intel rules

“The idea is for police in your area to better share essential information about possible criminal and terrorist threats with their federal counterparts, poor communication being one of the reasons why the terrorist hijackings were allowed to occur in the first place. Civil libertarians have repeatedly expressed concern that the centers are stockpiling too much personal data about Americans who haven’t committed a crime in the hope that some piece of it can be ‘fused’ with another to unravel a terrorist plot. Serrao and his colleagues counter that organizations like the ACLU ‘have no clue’ what’s actually being collected and analyzed at fusion centers.”

Visible IT: Numbers, Names, and User IDs

“Patrick rightly notes that, by definition, how a person spells his name is the correct way to spell it and by definition does not have ‘invalid characters’. It’s perhaps more correct to say that the computer system can’t handle the way a person represents their name. There are extreme cases of course such as TAFKAP and Wolfe+585, where people deliberately try to sabotage Our Modern World with unpronounceable or uncontainable names. But sometimes even the most benign names can cause computer systems fits.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Information Management: 10 Key Trends In MDM

“During 2010, independent/standalone data quality vendors (Clavis, Pitney Bowes, Human Inference and Trillium) will focus on name and address cleansing as they struggle against better-funded match/merge and data profiling capabilities increasingly integrated with megavendor MDM. Also at this time, a dearth of non-aligned matching algorithms (such as those from Digital Trowel, Infoglide, Omikron and Uniserve) will engender ‘algorithm envy’ among disenfranchised MDM providers.”

NewCityPatch: Legislator: Rockland Should Review Medicaid Spending

“Rockland County Legislator Ed Day, R-New City, has called for a review of Medicaid spending by the county that would also determine whether enough is being done to prevent and detect Medicaid fraud. ‘Medicaid expenditures represent an amount that is 110 percent of all the property taxes collected here in Rockland,’ said Day.”

Canadian Immigration: Canada should improve its AML efforts according to US report

“The most significant area of concern is organized crime. Canadian Security Intelligence Service estimates that there are about 750 organized crime groups operating in Canada and 80% of them are involved in the illicit drug trade. The cross-border movement of currency was identified as a continued concern.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Liliendahl on Data Quality: What is a best-in-class match engine?

“I don’t think anyone knows what product is the best match engine, because I don’t think that all match engines have been benchmarked with a representative set of data.”

ITBusinessEdge: SOA Spending on the Rise. Surprised? Here’s Why

“It’s important to realize that SOA is really a rather loose collection of best practices. It’s not necessarily a well-defined list where you have some checklist of things to do SOA and if you miss one, you’re not doing SOA. What’s happening is architecture teams are incorporating SOA best practices into various other initiatives.”

BTNonline.com: TSA To Assume All Watchlist Matching For U.S. Carriers By June, All Carriers By January

“The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is on track to assume watchlist matching from all U.S. carriers by the end of May, only slightly behind its March 31 U.S. implementation target for the Secure Flight passenger prescreening system, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report. The Secure Flight program also calls for TSA to assume watchlist matching from foreign carriers, and the agency already is working with 19 airlines outside the United States to do so. Five of those carriers are fully functional within the program, and an additional 14 are testing, GAO reported.”

[video] KENS5.com: UT Health Science Center helps bring medicine into computer age

“Currently 80 to 90 percent of all medical records are stored on paper.  The goal is that have an electronic health record for everyone in the U.S. by 2014. Electronic health records are expected to greatly reduce the number of medical errors, which is significant.  Each year in the United States, as many as 100,000 people die in hospitals because of such errors.  That’s the equivalent of one major airline crash every single day of every single year.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Recession Driving Insurance Fraud

“A recent post on McClatchy’s blog attributes growing insurance fraud to the recession: A recent survey of 37 state insurance-fraud bureaus by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud found that the recession “appears to have had a significant impact on the incidence of fraud” last year. On average, the bureaus reported increases in case referrals and new investigations in all 15 categories of fraud the survey covers.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: What is Data Quality anyway?

“If we look at what data quality tools today actually do, they in fact mostly support you with automation of data profiling and data matching, which is probably only some of the data quality challenges you have.”

Voice of America: Murder of US Consulate Workers in Mexico Signals New Phase in Violence

“Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for Austin, Texas-based analysis firm Stratfor, says the killings might have been related to a recently announced U.S. plan to increase cooperation with Mexican law enforcement agencies. ‘We believe that it is likely related to a decision last month to start working more closely with the Mexican government by the Americans,” said Scott Stewart. “They were going to put some personnel into a joint fusion center in Juarez.’”

Coalition Against Insurance Fraud: False claims act for Maryland

“The Coalition issued a statement supporting the bill, saying it would serve as a deterrent and a powerful incentive for medical providers to have strong compliance programs and to “play by the rules.” False claims acts help detect fraudulent schemes that otherwise might not ever be known because they allow insiders to blow the whistle and initiate civil actions.”

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By the Infoglide Team

tdwi: Informatica Ups the MDM Stakes

“Until now, Informatica’s MDM strategy has largely been peripheral. It had most of the tools (e.g., data integration, data quality, data profiling, and identity resolution) but tended to partner with bigger or best-of-breed players to promote MDM-oriented offerings or services… What’s risky about the acquisition of Siperian is that it imperils Informatica’s existing MDM partnerships (especially with Oracle Corp.) and compromises its neutrality pitch.”

GCN: Fusion centers to be assessed

“Fusion centers will conduct self-assessments, followed by a gap analysis and peer reviews, according to officials at the National Fusion Center Association, a new not-for-profit organization based in Alexandria, Va., that represents the 72 fusion centers. The assessments are meant to determine their progress in reaching baseline capabilities. Those capabilities were created by a federal advisory committee that also wrote the original guidelines for those centers.”

WorkersCompensation.com: NYSIF Announces 154 Arrests

“Recent significant cases resulting in millions of dollars in savings to NYSIF have included claimants who receive benefits while operating businesses or remain employed in other capacities, the most prevalent type of workers’ comp. fraud. Other cases involve premium fraud, the most costly type, in construction, asbestos abatement and other contracting, including investigations in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Postal Inspector, and local labor racketeering bureaus. Still other cases involve fraudulent provider billing.”

SignalScape: Experts Ponder Both Sides of Border Security

“The DHS has also tested mobile identification systems and created an information sharing plan with the Department of Justice which allows officials to search for criminal records. Art Macius, chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) added that organizations such as his and the DHS must also share information with their international counterparts. This international cooperation includes efforts such as cargo screening for commercial aircraft though efforts such as the Secure Flight program. Macius said that by this spring, the program will work with U.S. airlines to screen baggage and air cargo, and that the coverage will extend to international carriers by the end of the year.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Enriching E-discovery Results with Identity Resolution

“Civil lawsuits often result in discovery orders from the court to produce every shred of possibly relevant internal communication. The need to comprehend patterns across the resulting vast amount of aggregated data is critical. To help organizations respond to these demands, powerful e-discovery software systems (e.g., see StoredIQ) create data topology maps that identify the relationships between active sources of multiple forms of electronically stored information (ESI).”

USA Players: Lottery Winner Demands Payment After Crooked Clerk Pilfers Ticket 

“Pankaj Joshi, the accused, was an employee at the convenience store in which Willis purchased his tickets. Joshi had allegedly told Willis that the ticket that he presumed was worth millions was worth only $2 dollars, which Joshi presumably paid to Willis. Joshi was charged with lottery fraud, and it is suspected that he took the winnings and fled to his homeland of Nepal.”

For more, see “Lottery Fraud by Retailers Is an Identity Resolution Problem“

The Daily Texan: Civil liberties groups voice ‘fusion center’ apprehension

“It will be funded initially by U.S. Department of Homeland Security grants and will then become self-sustaining, using personnel already within APD’s budget. ‘It is really important for law enforcement to be able to share information in a timely fashion, because when you share information, you can solve crimes quicker and, in some cases, prevent another serial offense from happening,’ Carter said. Carter said Central Texas agencies possess large amounts of lawfully collected information, but separate information systems hinder the sharing of information.”

BeyeNETWORK: Master Data Management Checklist #5: Data Quality Mechanics

[David Loshin] “The ability to use the traditional data quality toolset of data parsing, standardization and matching enables the development of a “customer master,” “product master,” “security master,” etc. that becomes the master entity index to be used for ongoing identity resolution and elimination of duplicate entries.”

Airlines and Destinations: Passenger Info Required at Booking under TSA’s Secure Flight Program

“When making a flight booking, each passenger must declare their full name just as it appears in their passport, as well as their gender and date of birth. The airline sends the information to the TSA 72 hours before the flight departure time. The TSA compares the information with watch lists with the purpose of identifying suspected terrorists, preventing access to flights by passengers prohibited from flying, and identifying individuals for whom an enhanced security check should be performed.”

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By the Infoglide Team

information management: Multi-Entity MDM Enablement

“Most efforts, however, are executed in surroundings inhibited by existing infrastructure (legacy applications, tools, hardware and integration), dispersed organizational structures and suboptimal processes. This reality introduces challenges in architecting and deploying efficient and effective multi-entity MDM solutions.”

BAM INTEL: BAM’s Thinking on the New DHS Standards

“Public Fusion Centers must be seen by citizens and policy-makers to play a direct role in the response to disasters as well as intelligence gathering. They cannot remain in the intelligence-sharing role only and not take some of the spotlight when their good work prevents or lessens the impact of America’s next disaster.”

newsday.com: OPINION: Revolution right in your doctor’s hand

“For doctors and their patients (in other words, all of us), the electronic health record is a far more revolutionary idea than those that brought us the ability to download a song, post a video online or read and send e-mails when you’re on a camping trip. While those other innovations indirectly enhance the quality of life, they are designed for entertainment or business purposes. The EHR directly improves quality of life because the end result of its design is better health.”

SmartData Collective: Data May Require Unique Data Quality Processes

“All data quality projects can appear the same from afar but ultimately can be as different as stars and planets. One of the biggest ways they vary is in the data itself and whether it is chiefly made up of name and address data or some other type of data.”

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By the Infoglide Team

revenueXL: Web based EMR - ASP vs. SaaS? Should you really care?

“SaaS applications differ from ASP applications in that SaaS solutions are developed specifically to leverage web technologies such as the browser, thereby making them web-native. The database design and architecture of SaaS applications are specifically built with ‘multi-tenancy’ in mind, thereby enabling multiple tenants (customers or users) to access a shared data model. An ASP application on the other hand in most cases is a typical Client-Server application (meant for a single client) that is accessed over the internet and therefore includes an independent instance of Database that is specifically meant for your medical office.”

The Data Asset: Closing the Loop: Selecting the Right Technology

“Data management tools include those for data profiling, data quality and identity resolution. Measures that need to be addressed include data standardization, pattern standardization, address verification, and adherence to business rules.”

Homeland Security: DHS Announces New Information-Sharing Tool to Help Fusion Centers Combat Terrorism

“State and major urban area fusion centers provide critical links for information sharing between and across all levels of government, and help fulfill key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This initiative will serve as a valuable resource to enhance situational awareness and support more timely and complete analysis of national security threats.”

ITBusinessEdge: Seven Data Integration Trends

“Master data management, which should be an enterprisewide endeavor, is being deployed for tactical purposes. The result? MDM projects support specific business needs and aren’t fully integrated across the enterprise.”

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