Identity Resolution Daily

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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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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Homeland Security Watch: Homeland Security & Technology Panel Event

“Greg Nojeim, Director of the Project on Freedom, Security, and Technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology offered insightful warnings about the unintended consequences of technology when it is not developed or deployed with privacy protections at the initial stages.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: Jill Dyche: At Night She Sells Oranges: Sarah Mclachlan Eats Our Lunch

“You may have seen Baseline’s latest YouTube video, one of several in our ongoing Get in the Game series. To film it we took advantage of the actor’s strike in L.A. and ended up producing several videos on the cheap. We were pretty proud of our opportunism, which let us deliver a funny and tongue-in-cheek send-up of master data management. The video illustrates how customer identity resolution —a key part of the MDM stack—is a problem that can often be found in your own backyard, as it were.”

Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds: NRF Survey shows Organized Retail Crime activity is growing!

“When I stated that this activity hurts all of us, the reason is that retailers have to make up the $30 billion they are losing to this activity somewhere. This normally equates to higher prices, or in extreme circumstances (especially in tight economic times) cutting payroll. Simply stated, people might be losing their jobs because of this activity.”

Andy on Enterprise Software: Data Quality stories

“The most entertaining thing I saw was a presentation by a consultancy firm on some real-life data quality situations they had encountered at clients, showing just how tricky data quality algorithms can be.”

National Retail Federation: The Most Famous Sheriff You Never Heard Of: Sheriff Grady Judd of Florida’s Polk County Sheriff’s Office will speak about high-profile cases of organized retail crime

“Sheriff Judd and I have something in common—we truly believe in the value of educating the public about organized retail crime. During Sheriff Judd’s keynote at the opening session of the LP show, he will address the importance of partnering with local retailers and others in the private sector. He will also share his story about uncovering the organized retail crime ring and about how his team worked with local retailers to track the criminals.”

[Note: While not exactly on topic, we felt that anyone who reads or writes blogs should be aware of the following story.]
Concurring Opinions: The Associated Press, Copyright, and the Blogosphere

“The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.”

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Hi-Tech-Blog: “Shoplifting Ring Pocketed Millions”

“A joint task force of federal agents and San Jose police officers arrested 17 alleged members of organized crime families for their suspected involvement in a shoplifting ring. Authorities say that the Le and Vo crime families employed hundreds of shoplifters to steal from retail stores.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: David Loshin: Microsoft to Purchase Zoomix?

“Just heard through the rumor mill that Microsoft is ‘thinking about acquiring Zoomix.’“

CNBC: Retail Theft Up But Is Bad Economy The Cause?

“A record number of retailers–85%–say that they’ve been victims of organized retail crime in the past 12 months. That’s up 6% since 2007. . . . According to the NRF, nearly two-thirds (63%) of retailers experienced an increase in online resale of stolen items or ‘e-fencing’ during the past 12 months. Maybe this illegal online market is booming because consumers are now comfortable with buying from eBay or unknown merchants if the price is right.”

PogoWasRight.org: Your Papers Please: TSA outlaws ID-less flight

“In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly.”

Hub Solution Designs: Importance of Integration to MDM

“While integration doesn’t always have to be real-time, if you find yourself thinking solely in a batch-oriented mode, take a step back and ask yourself, ‘what will we be giving up by not providing for any real-time capabilities?’”

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[Post from Infoglide] That’s the Ticket: Addressing a Different Kind of Lottery Fraud

“Type ‘lottery fraud’ into Google, and you get lots of returns warning about the dangers of Nigerian lottery scams and other phishing attacks on unsuspecting, and/or perhaps overly optimistic, consumers. But there are less well known types of lottery fraud also being perpetrated, and some of them hurt consumers as well.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: Jill Dyche: Doublin’ Down at the Data Governance Conference

“In a prior blog I bemoaned having to miss Informatica World in Vegas this week. (Regular readers of the Jillblog know that what happens in Vegas gets blogged about almost immediately.) But I feel much better now, since the Wilshire Data Governance Conference in San Francisco has already exceeded my expectations.”

Washington Business Journal: Retail survey reveals growing theft problems

“Retailers are battling an increase of organized retail crime, according to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2008 Organized Retail Crime report published Wednesday.”

Informatica: Data Quality - Ensuring Trust in Your Data

“TDWI once published a study that poor data quality was costing companies an estimated $600B annually in the US alone. And yet, industry analysts estimate the data quality tools market to be between $300-400M annually. The demand for better data quality is clearly there, but the size of the data quality tools market does not appear to reflect that same demand. Could it be that traditional Data Quality tools are not delivering enough value for customers?”

PogoWasRight.org: Few Canadians are ‘very confident’ their personal data is safe with retailers, banks and governments

“Of the three types of organizations, Canadian retailers fared the worst, with less than one per cent (O.5 per cent) of consumers saying they are very confident retailers can protect their customers’ on-line personal and private information.”

Andy on Enterprise Software: The dust clears (a bit)

“I have wondered for some time about Informatica’s intentions in the MDM space. There had been some market rumours about them possibly buying Siperian, but it seems as if their not so secret meetings with Siperian were actually to form a partnership, which was just announced.”

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Note: There will be no post on Monday as we will be observing Memorial Day. Enjoy your holiday weekend, and we hope to ’see’ you back here on Wednesday.

[Post from Infoglide] Partners in Crime Fighting

“eBay and other online auction services have taken some heat from retailers and Congress because organized retail crime rings and other shoplifters are using these types of services for e-fencing. It’s a bit of a dilemma for these sites because if they do the right thing, and reduce e-fencing on their sites, they lose revenue, which is certainly something no business, public or private, wants to do.”

The 451 Group (requires free registration): An MDM acquisition: the next deal for Informatica?

“Through a combination of homegrown and acquired software, Informatica now has all the requisite pieces for a complete MDM offering – data access, data analysis and profiling, data correction, cleansing, data transformation and now identity management – but not an actual MDM platform itself. It therefore seems logical to us that once the company has digested Identity, a deal scheduled to close in May, it will start eyeing an MDM target to provide a complete offering.”

WKYC.com: Shoplifting: A $40 billion enterprise

“A National Retail Federation study indicates 75 percent of businesses have found their shoplifted items for sale on the internet. . . . Bokovitz said increased incidents of shoplifting are directly related to the state legislature’s decision to drop progressive sentencing on theft related crimes. The penalties for shoplifting no longer increase with the number of times you commit the crime. So who really pays the price? ‘Me and you, the consumer, everybody who plays by the rules because our costs just went up,’ Bokovitz said.”

Netrics HD: The Monk Factor

“It’s great to see that simply collecting customer data is no longer good enough - the data needs to be usable to benefit the business. ‘Refining customer data quality and access to customer data have emerged as two of the top marketing investment priorities of b-to-b CMOs this year. Half of b-to-b marketers plan to put more resources against creating marketing databases, cleaning up customer data, improving sales force automation and CRM integration, according to Forrester Research in its “B2B CMO Investment Priorities for 2008” report.’”

PogoWasRight.org: DHS to monitor access to IT systems

“Government employees, contractors and consultants with access to Homeland Security Department computer systems are among those whose names and personal information will be kept in a newly created database, according to a notice posted in the Federal Register.”

DMReview: Master Data Management and Service-Oriented Architecture

“One of the many ‘hidden benefits’ of a successful master data management (MDM) strategy is the contribution it can make to your enterprise’s move toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA).”

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eBay and other online auction services have taken some heat from retailers and Congress because organized retail crime rings and other shoplifters are using these types of services for e-fencing. It’s a bit of a dilemma for these sites because if they do the right thing, and reduce e-fencing on their sites, they lose revenue, which is certainly something no business, public or private, wants to do.

But eBay seems to be doing the right thing and has dedicated resources to addressing this problem. They have established the Global Law Enforcement Organization (GLEO) to “promote the safe use of their platforms and to collaborate with local, federal and international law enforcement to:

• Help keep the community safe
• Enforce policies
• Prosecute fraudsters”

They also have a partnership with LeadsOnline that allows law enforcement to locate sellers of possible stolen goods that are being listed on their site.

This is key because even when retailers have a really strong case against a seller, it takes a lot of time to find the seller and work with law enforcement to prosecute them. With eBay’s partnerships with LeadsOnline and law enforcement, retailers can more quickly and easily recover stolen goods and catch the bad guys.

But are we putting the cart before the horse? This takes care of the catching and retrieving part but how do the retailers find the stolen merchandise and the crooks? Well, they can do this either manually or they can automate the process. With the first option, retailers assign investigators to manually monitor online auction sites, checking goods for sale against lists of merchandise that have been stolen from their stores. Obviously this is time and resource consuming.

Luckily there’s an easier way. Infoglide Software’s Online Auction Monitoring solution automatically monitors online auction sites for merchandise that is a strong possible match for stolen goods. Online Auction Monitoring can also tap into other key sources of data such as human resources, vendors, reward programs, and incidents databases, so not only can retailers be alerted of a nefarious seller, but they can also know that the seller is an employee or customer of their store.

In a recent study with a regional grocer, Infoglide Software monitored 17 ‘high-risk items’ on a popular auction site for just five days. At the end of the monitoring period, more than 30 unique sellers were identified as having a history of selling many high-risk items over the previous 90 days.

So though e-fencing continues to be significant source of lost revenue for retailers, there are now tools and resources available to address this problem. Retailers now have their own partners in crime fighting.

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FurnitureToday: High tech security keeps shrinkage down

“Point-of-sale monitoring also is on the increase, allowing retailers to collect and analyze information on every transaction, thereby identifying trends and unusual patterns in each store. . . . ‘There are a number of new technology tools available to help retailers operate more efficiently, including intelligent cameras and software that can help detect criminal activity,’ said ADT’s Bean.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: Jill Dyche: My Podcast Posse at TDWI

“Anyway, I got to interview a stellar crew last week and thought I’d highlight them here:”

Concurring Opinions: My New Book, Understanding Privacy

“I am very happy to announce the publication of my new book, UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY (Harvard University Press, May 2008). There has been a longstanding struggle to understand what ‘privacy’ means and why it is valuable. Professor Arthur Miller once wrote that privacy is ‘exasperatingly vague and evanescent.’ In this book, I aim to develop a clear and accessible theory of privacy, one that will provide useful guidance for law and policy.”

Homeland Security Watch: Chertoff, FEMA Chief Meet with HLSwatch Today

“The third ‘blogger roundtable’ convenes this afternoon, this time the Secretary of Homeland Security is accompanied by the head of FEMA to discuss the upcoming hurricane season. . . . Submit a comment below if you have any specific questions in this general subject area that you would like raised during the roundtable.”

ebiz: Informatica Completes Acquisition Of Identity Systems

“‘Together, Identity Systems and Informatica will provide a new generation of innovative technology to meet the demands of organizations in today’s global information economy,’ said Ivan Chong, General Manager of Informatica’s Data Quality Business Unit. ‘More so than ever before, corporations and governments need identity resolution integrated with data quality initiatives across their enterprises.’”

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[Post from Infoglide] More Than “Nice”: Identity Resolution is Core to MDM

“Writing about Informatica’s acquisition of Identity Systems, industry expert Jill Dyche offers a great perspective on MDM. This author of a number of very useful books on MDM, CRM, and data warehousing shared in a recent post that she sees the acquisition by Informatica as a good one for the company and the industry.”

DataFlux Community of Experts: Privacy and Data Governance

“At the recent data governance executive briefings that I participated in with Scott Gidley from DataFlux, one of the examples that came up in conversation regarding data governance was that of data privacy.”

WFAA.com: Organized retail theft rings work stores

“Retailers say organized packs of shoplifters are sweeping shelves clean, then reselling stolen goods on eBay or at flea markets. ‘We have not seen regular shoplifting rise over the last several weeks or months because of inflation,’ said Kroger spokesman Garry Huddleston. ‘What we have seen increase is organized retail crime.’”

Today’s THV: MLK Commissioners Defend Director Linked To Fraud Ring

“The state’s insurance commissioner said last week that the state could pursue charges against DuShun Scarbrough, who began working for the commission in March. Scarbrough has not been charged with a crime, but court papers filed by the state say he received more than $19,000 in false insurance claims for accidents tied to the ring.”

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