Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] And Then There Were Two

“IBM announced today that it plans to buy MDM vendor Initiate Systems.  As hypothesized here in this blog last week, the move was not entirely unexpected, but on the heels of last week’s announcement by Informatica to purchase Siperian, it certainly creates yet another wave in the marketplace.  More moves are certain to take place as competing companies align – and realign – their Single Entity View (SEV) strategies.  The key to this realignment will be for current industry players to maximize their functionality beyond ‘playing with matches’.  That dated view of fuzzy matching is no longer enough.  Not for the large data quality vendors.  Certainly not for the customer.”

Information Week: Global CIO: IBM Data Strategy Is Flawed, Say Kalido And Informatica

“Noting that Initiate’s product is spefically designed to handle only certain types of data—customer data and product data—Kalido CEO Hewitt says, ‘Where they have struggled is in mastering multiple domains, even though they advertise their products as such. The problem is that as you add domains, the complexity of the data relationships expands exponentially. So one domain might have 100 relationships, two domains 300 relationships, 10 domains 3,000 relationships. So when one master data element changes, hundreds of relationships could change, which requires a governance process to manage it.’”

Columbia Daily Tribune: Networks advance child-trafficking investigation

“Watson called up a contact at the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a fusion center that combines intelligence from federal law enforcement and state and military sources. Watson also called a friend at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and asked him to prepare a ’serious incident report.’ ICE mobilized an officer specializing in human trafficking within minutes, Watson said.”

ITBusinessEdge: How Big Deals Affect MDM Competitors, Customers

“But the general upheaval in MDM aside, the IBM deal is interesting in another way. IBM has downplayed this as an MDM acquisition, positioning it more as buying into two verticals, health care and a government. Gartner’s Andrew White writes that at one point during the briefing, IBM was asked what the Initiate acquisition meant for MDM. IBM responded it reflects a ‘verticalization of MDM.’ White writes that’s good news for health care customers, but ‘troubling for IBM MDM product strategy.’”

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[Post from Infoglide] Gentlemen, Start Your Engines (and don’t play with those matches)

“Much is happening these days in the Data Quality space.  Customers are embracing MDM strategies at a record pace, M&A activity has picked up from an industry perspective, and the various players in the data quality marketplace are expanding their offerings like never before.  It matters little if the objective is to vet fraud or to master data. The race to deliver the dream of an enterprise-wide single-entity-view (SEV) is on.  Gentlemen (and Danica Patrick)… start your engines!”

legal blog: Top 10 Fraud Cases for 2009

“A New York man has been sentenced to serve four years in prison after failing to pay $1.6 million in workers’ compensation premiums. Chong-mun Chae, of South Korea, owned an asbestos removal company but falsely claimed that he had only one employee and that it was a secretary. He avoided being caught earlier by changing the name of his company several times.”

Software Insider: News Analysis: Siperian Acquisition Vaults Informatica Into An MDM Leadership Position

“The Bottom Line For Vendors - Acquisition of Siperian Hastens MDM Market Consolidation… Expect more acquisitions to occur as the market consolidates.  Potential acquirers include EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.” 

BioPrepWatch.com: Security stepped up at Super Bowl

“A separate Fusion Center will be run by the Miami-Dade Police Department to disseminate intelligence and other information to other South Florida police and government agencies. We collect intelligence from all over the world and then we disseminate it, so that everyone knows what’s going on,” William Maddalena, a Miami FBI official in charge of special events, told The Washington Post. “We’ll have daily briefings to put out the latest information we have.”

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By Douglas Wood, Infoglide Senior Vice President

Much is happening these days in the Data Quality space.  Customers are embracing MDM strategies at a record pace, M&A activity has picked up from an industry perspective, and the various players in the data quality marketplace are expanding their offerings like never before.  It matters little if the objective is to vet fraud or to master data. The race to deliver the dream of an enterprise-wide single-entity-view (SEV) is on.  Gentlemen (and Danica Patrick)… start your engines!

The key word here, naturally, is ‘engines’.  An engine moves things forward, and performs considerably more than one basic task.  As has been well-documented here at IdentityResolutionDaily, a true identity resolution engine plays a vital part of any SEV initiative.  Technologies that can look at data across disparate silos and return results that point to both matches AND non-obvious relationships are in high demand…  and set to grow even further in 2010.  The simplicity of “yes it’s a match” or “no, it’s not a match” is no longer sufficient for most organizations as they seek the single-entity-view.  Remember, an entity is not merely made up of attributes… but also relationships.  A true ‘engine’ points to those relationships, and moves the entire data quality initiative forward.

An engine cares little what the car looks like, and ought to drive a multitude of vehicles.  Similarly, an identity resolution engine ought to be built to solve a multitude of problems.  SEV for exposing risk and fraud, SEV for Healthcare Patient Matching, SEV for Law Enforcement, SEV for customer relationship management, SEV for data disambiguation, SEV for house-holding, and so on and so on.  The engine should perform the same functions… while only the domain (or body type) changes.

It also occurs to us that the engine ought to be flexible in terms of what is mounted to the chassis – and how.  Do you want the 2.2L engine?  4 cylinder or 6 cylinder?  In the case of an identity resolution engine, customers ought to be able to pick how the functionality is delivered.  Full enterprise software license with professional services to build the car?  Done.  Functionality on demand a la Infoglide Software’s Identity Resolution as a Service (IRaaS ^TM) offering?  You got it.  A SEV appliance that sits behind a customer’s firewall to alleviate privacy-in-data concerns?  No problem.

The need for an SEV engine that provides a powerful library of matching and relationship capabilities, delivered in a variety of customer-friendly methods is now more critical than ever.  With the increase in activity lately around the MDM space, one thing is clear:  the race is most definitely on.

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[Post from Infoglide] Master Data Movement

“I read with interest yesterday’s article at SeekingAlpha which discusses rumors swirling around the MDM software industry.  According to the article, sources suggest that two deals are very near completion.  The first of those rumored transactions would see Informatica picking up MDM provider Siperian.  On the heels of their acquisitions of Identity Systems and AddressDoctor, the Siperian purchase could not be totally unexpected – but would most certainly create some ripple effect worth watching.”

[Post from Infoglide] Connecting the Dots: We May Be Closer Than We Think

“Paul Rosenzweig, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security, recently posted an intriguing piece on Harvard National Security Journal about connecting the dots regarding the Christmas Bomber. He makes a strong case that a decision to stop research on data analytic tools in 2003 has contributed to the problem analysts face today in making sense of the massive and manifold data sources they sift through.”

Forrester Blog: Introducing The MDM Market’s Newest 800lb Gorilla: Informatica Acquires Siperian!

“In the short term, I’m sure Informatica will be more than happy to continue to collect revenue from Oracle while keeping this partnership alive, but don’t expect future negotiated contracted terms to remain very reasonable as Informatica gains traction with its MDM strategy. No matter how often Oracle says how happy they are to maintain a friendly state of co-opetition with strategic partners, I don’t anticipate they will want to run the risk of a competitor pulling the rug out from under its aggressive MDM strategy.”

News8Austin: Community forum poses questions about Fusion Center

“According to department officials, sharing information with neighboring jurisdictions as well as state and federal agencies ensures that crime history and other information is shared outside the city limits. The department said it the center will be one that ‘analyzes information in order to best detect, respond and hopefully prevent criminal and terrorist activity — as well as other public safety hazards.’”

Ramon Chen: Informatica + Siperian Acquisition = Premier MDM Platform

“As expected, Informatica has announced that it has acquired Siperian (disclosure, my former company) for $130M… If predictions are correct, this will be a relative ‘bargain’ when compared with the upcoming IBM and Initiate Systems tie up which is expected to be 4 to 5x Initiate’s $90M annual revenues.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Liliendahl on Data Quality: Create Table Homo_Sapiens

“Identity Resolution is about the same but  – if a distinction is considered to exist – uses a wider range of data, rules and functionality to relate collected data rows to real world entities. In my eyes exploiting external reference data will add considerable efficiency in the years to come within deduplication / identity resolution.”

OmniMD: Clock starts ticking on meaningful use comments

“The clock starts ticking today on a two-month window in which the public can comment on the Health & Human Service Department’s “meaningful use” proposal, a set of rules outlining how providers can qualify for incentives for using electronic health records.”

Beyond Search: Startling Fact: Size of Cloud Computing Market

“The global cloud computing market is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 28 percent from $47 billion in 2008 to $126 billion by 2012, according to IBM based on various market estimates.’

National Underwriter: Fraud Increases In ’09; Bureau Budgets Tighten 

“The Coalition interviewed 37 fraud bureaus during the first three weeks of Oct. 2009 for its survey, titled ‘The Economy and Fraud Fighting on the State Level.’ The bureau directors were asked for their views on trends in 15 areas of fraud, which include staged auto accidents, auto give-ups, padding auto and homeowner claims, arson, and workers’ compensation fraud by both workers and employers.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Healthcare Identity Resolution Confusion

“Confusion about medical records can lead to chaos. We’ve all heard horror stories about hospital tragedies caused by misidentification of a patient, such as applying an unnecessary surgery. It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of correct, unambiguous information in the practice of medicine. Knowing as much as possible about a patient enables a practitioner to reach a correct diagnosis and the proper treatment regimen in the least amount of time.”

NewsandSentinel.com: Local officials do their part to fight terrorism

“Tom Campbell, a consultant on terrorist issues who has worked with Sandy in the past, has been in the field of counter-terrorism for 14 years. We do not profile based on ethnicity and race, what we do is profile behavior,” said Campbell. “Terrorism is evolutionary. Terrorists are always changing their behavior, appearances and tactics. What we try to do to prevent terrorism is focus on the behavior. That’s how we disrupt it before it happens. The emphasis is on prevention.”

intelligent enterprise: Predicting BI Highlights for 2010

“Cloud computing and SaaS will become less niche as both BI heavy weights and vertically-focused vendors recognize that the infrastructure side of BI offers little competitive advantage; instead, it’s the time-to-value and agility. IT owners who don’t want to give up any control are in for a bruising.”

ISRIA: Testimony of Secretary Napolitano before the Senate Committee on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “Intelligence Reform: The Lessons and Implications of the Christmas Day Attack”

“DHS uses TSDB data, managed by the Terrorist Screening Center that is administered by the FBI, to determine who may board, who requires further screening and investigation, who should not be admitted, or who should be referred to appropriate law enforcement personnel. Specifically, to help make these determinations, DHS uses the No-Fly List and the Selectee List, two important subsets within the TSDB. Individuals on the No-Fly List should not receive a boarding pass for a flight to, from, over, or within the United States.”

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By the Infoglide Team

hrtools: Workers’ comp anti-fraud and compliance program saved $128 million in FY 2009

“The fight against fraud in the workers’ compensation system brought in $128 million last year, according to a new report from the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I)… L&I also referred 25 fraud cases for criminal prosecution, including 18 workers, four employers, and three health care providers — with a 100 percent success rate.”  [Link to Full Report]

Connecticutplus.com: Governor Rell directs State Homeland Security officials to review summary of NWA 253 failures

“‘Connecticut is home to a state and local ‘fusion center‘ – a place where we share the information with our federal homeland security partners,’ Governor Rell said… Connecticut’s proximity to New York, its number of high-profile locations and its importance as a transportation hub mean that fusion center is a critical – and very busy – place. We want to make sure there are no avoidable breakdowns.’”

FierceEMR: CDC: More than 40 percent of docs have EMRs

“Breaking down the numbers leads to a little more sanity. About 20.5 percent of respondents say they had a basic system capable of recording patient demographics, problem lists, clinical notes, medication orders and of viewing test results. Just 6.3 percent had fully functional EMRs, with medical histories, electronic order entry, drug interaction checking, highlighting of abnormal readings and reminders for guideline-based interventions, the CDC says.”

The Server Room: Cloud Computing and the Hype Cycle

“Hence we’d like to claim that the recent interest in cloud computing, taken in the context of prior developments on grid computing, the service paradigm and virtualization and over the infrastructure provided by the Internet, is actually the slow climb into the Slope of Enlightenment.  Experimentation will continue, and some attempts will still fail.  However the general trend will be toward mainstreaming.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Entity-Based Integration Model

“From a business standpoint, entity resolution (ER) is really the first step of a two-part process of integrating information about entities.  Entity reference records usually carry two types of attributes describing the entity, identifying attributes and informational attributes. Although the line between the two can be fuzzy, identifying attributes are those that describe the entity’s ‘characteristics,’ information that tends to persist over time and helps to distinguish one entity from another of the same type.”

Healthcare Technology Online: 10 Healthcare IT Trends To Watch In 2010

“According to the latest statistics from HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), only 0.5% of U.S. hospitals currently have a complete EMR (electronic medical record) system that provides data continuity throughout the institution. Hospitals and healthcare systems will install, integrate, and enhance EMR systems at an accelerated pace in an effort to demonstrate ‘meaningful use’ and capitalize on ARRA incentives.”

InformationWeek: Airline Security: The Technical Task Of Connecting Dots

“Pulling those data streams together–from federal agencies, law enforcement, foreign governments, and private sector companies–and getting that information to the right people quickly and in useable format are huge technical challenges. While there were obvious missed opportunities in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, including failure to take action with information in hand, it would be a mistake to underestimate the end-to-end data integration effort required as one of, simply, ‘connecting the dots.’”

ChannelWeb: Gartner: Cloud Computing Contributes To Mass IT Asset Exodus

“Cloud computing will take such a stranglehold on the market as companies try to reduce hardware spending that Gartner has made the bold proclamation that one-fifth of all businesses will own absolutely no IT assets come 2012.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Actionable Identity Intelligence from Identity Resolution

“The recent ‘Christmas Bomber’ incident incited many posts about applying technology to address the gaps that allowed it to happen. For example, David Loshin wrote about a piece for BeyeNETWORK about a ‘master terrorist system’ while Lawrence Dubov suggested improving the watch list process using entity resolution. While technology is a critical component of any solution, some specific issues about the technology are important to understand.”

[Post from Infoglide] Entity Resolution Cloud Rising in 2010

A recent Information Week article referenced Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s views on the future of IT that were offered during a December 17th analyst call. His remarks hint at the growing importance of cloud computing as a key driver in 2010. Writer Bob Evans mentioned that ‘Ellison also quite casually wove the terms ‘private clouds’ and ‘cloud computing’ into his strategic overview without lampooning them, which was a big step forward even though Ellison’s discomfort with the term is shared by IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd.’”

Business Computing World: Trends In Master Data Management

[Philip Howard] “One of the outcomes of the recession has been that a lot of companies have cut back on long-term projects, especially where ROI may not be clear. And talking to various people it is clear that one of the areas so hit has been large hub-based MDM (Master Data Management) projects. That is because these typically take 18 months to 2 years to implement, require a lot of investment in time and money, and the benefits are a long way in the future.”

Chicago Security: What is a Fusion Intelligence Analyst?

“These analysts are responsible for providing support to decision makers by fusing information from local and federal law enforcement criminal databases with national-level intelligence from the Department of Homeland Security, for example, to create relevant intelligence products (finished reports about salient issues) to leaders (also known as “intelligence customers”) at all levels of government.”

Initiate Blog: Entity Resolution to Build a Better “Watch List”

“We should not be afraid to create more data sources and integrate more information. The fear is we run the risk of missing the useful information in a sea of worthless data. Entity resolution technology can make sense of all that information and resolve identities and relationships between them.”

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By Brian Calvert, Infoglide Senior Software Architect

The recent “Christmas Bomber” incident incited many posts about applying technology to address the gaps that allowed it to happen. For example, David Loshin wrote about a piece for BeyeNETWORK about a “master terrorist system” while Lawrence Dubov suggested improving the watch list process using entity resolution. While technology is a critical component of any solution, some specific issues about the technology are important to understand.

In an address this week, President Obama outlined the shortcomings in people, processes, and technologies that gave the now infamous Christmas Bomber the opportunity to take down a Detroit-bound flight.

President Obama identified three major problem areas:

It’s now clear that shortcomings occurred in three broad and compounding ways. First, although our intelligence community had learned a great deal about the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen called al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — that we knew that they sought to strike the United States, and that they were recruiting operatives to do so — the intelligence community did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence related to a possible attack against the homeland.

Second, this contributed to a larger failure of analysis — a failure to connect the dots of intelligence that existed across our intelligence community, and which together could have revealed that Abdulmutallab was planning an attack.

Third, this in turn fed into shortcomings in the watch-listing system which resulted in this person not being placed on the no-fly list; thereby allowing him to board that plane in Amsterdam for Detroit.

CNN highlighted one additional failing that’s relevant to the topic of Identity Resolution (my emphasis):

A timeline provided by the State Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, showed that an initial check of the suspect based on his father’s information failed to disclose he had a multiple-entry U.S. visa. The reason was that AbdulMutallab’s name was misspelled. “That search did not come back positive,” said one official, who called it a quick search without using multiple variants of spelling.

What are the specific technology issues?

While the details of the technologies used by the State Department are not identified, the story is typically the same for government and industry. Simple equivalency lookups are not enough. “John Kennedy” will not match “Jhon Kennedy” with standard database lookups. Furthermore, some technologies rely on strategies that actually destroy the forensic integrity of the data. They force it into pre-existing molds in a variety of ways to perform similarity matching. We’ve addressed the many challenges to matching names in this blog in the past, especially in “Playing the Name Game with Terrorist Watch Lists and Shoplifter Databases”.

Indexing is one approach that can fail. It tries to turn common names and known variations and nicknames into identical easily matched tokens. So John, Jack, and Johnny might all translate to “F12391″, facilitating a quick match. But what happens when John’s name — like AbdulMutallab’s — is misspelled? “Jhon” will fail to be matched to the common code and, thus, the match will quickly fail. Encoding is another common example that we addressed. Algorithms like “soundex” attempt to translate words into a fuzzy phonetic equivalent. But the promise of these algorithms falls short, especially when they encounter misspellings, nicknames, and cultural variations.

So while merging all information into a common view or improving watchlist management might be part of the solution, they will still fail if the technology used to merge or search is not up to the task.

Not all identity resolution technologies are the same. Ours can be configured using a number of strategies to fit particular customer performance requirements, sensitivity to false positives or false negatives, and Similarity Search behaviors, including specialized name algorithms that catch misspellings, nicknames, and ordering variations.

Although the consequences are grimmer in homeland security situations, the challenges are the same for financial, healthcare, gaming, state and local government, and marketing applications. While it remains to be seen what improvements the US government will apply to the people, processes, and technology used to secure the country, it’s easy to see that simple misspellings need not break the system or, for that matter, any other system.

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