Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] Managing Unstructured Data

“In an earlier article, Governing Unstructured Data, I discussed some of the challenges in managing and securing unstructured data in a large enterprise. Given that unstructured data accounts for more than 80% of all business data, this is a big issue.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Blog: James Taylor: What if someone with a lower pay grade were to do this?

“Patrick Joseph Gauthier wrote a great post this week called “Business Process Reengineering: The Right Skills And Roles For The Task Will Save You Money” and I loved the question he suggests (that gave me the title for this post):  ‘what if someone with a lower pay grade were to do this?’ . . . This is, indeed, one of the main drivers of decision management. . . . Instead of having hundreds of front-line staff refer decisions to many managers who follow guidelines taught to them by the one person who understands the company policy, empower the front-line staff to act by having that one person control the rules in a decision and having that decision happen automatically.”

kentnews.co.uk: Police facing tough battle to tackle cybercrime

“Tackling paedophiles who use the internet to groom children through chat rooms and create and share child pornography on the web was discussed at the conference and has been the subject of many high-profile cases. This time last year a paedophile ring involving a woman, who used to work at a pharmaceutical company in Kent, were jailed as part of a Kent Police investigation called Operation Starlight, which traced the criminals’ activity using the internet. Officers discovered extensive abuse of children under 13.”

The Bunker Blog: Couple Who Sold Stolen Merchandise On Craigslist And eBay Caught Using Doll And Stroller To Shoplift

“A couple in Pasco, WA was caught using a doll and stroller to conceal DVD’s and other merchandise. . . . At least they weren’t using a real baby! Still, they had over $800.00 in stolen merchandise in the stroller when police stopped them. Police have also stated that the couple have sold stolen merchandise on Craigslist and eBay in the past.”

Evolution of Security: Seven Years Later

“Thinking back to 9/11 and when I joined TSA, I remember how people often said hello and even shook our hands. For the traveling public, it’s been seven years without an attack in the U.S., and to many, the rules are now burdensome and our checkpoints are a necessary evil. For officers, it’s one day at a time, with some days when you find a gun, a knife, hollowed out shoes, or items in bags that look like plastic explosives or an IED. Things that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, your heart stop, because it’s a threat until you can prove it’s not one. It happens far more than you think, so when an officer asks to get a better look at you or your bag, know that it’s because they want to make sure everything’s okay.”

PogoWasRight.org: Hacker pleads guilty in breach (TJX update)

“Federal prosecutors won a guilty plea yesterday from one of 11 men who made up a ring that was charged last month with the largest data theft case in history, involving tens of millions of customers of retailers, including TJX Cos. of Framingham and BJ’s Wholesale Club of Natick. Separately the government also said it has evidence the group breached the security of many more businesses than previously disclosed.”

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NOTE: We apologize for our recent technical problems. They’ve been fixed, and we don’t anticipate any further disruptions.

Hub Solution Designs: August Column in DM Review

“MDM without a robust approach to data quality can be dangerous. We’ve all heard the IT cliché ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ But that is very true of building an MDM hub solution. You’re literally at the mercy of the worst data entry person in the company as you gather information from any number of source systems to feed into your new hub.”

MarketWatch: Bra thief busted

“A New York man from the regal borough of Queens was charged with selling $80,000 worth of stolen Victoria’s Secret brassieres on eBay. Over 2,000 bras ranging in value from $40 to $80 were allegedly sold by George Tutaya on the auction site. . . . The eBay aliases have since been removed but the New York Post reports that buyers were quite pleased with Tutaya’s service, which received a 100 percent approval rating.”

Confessions of a database geek: Data Quality Conference: Are you going?

“That said, if you have a strong interest in data quality, I encourage you to take a look at the conference program. Larry English and David Loshin are two of the featured speakers. (I still remember a presentation from Larry at a TDWI conference 10 years ago — he’s great.) Looking further, I see presentations ranging from metrics to politics to dictionaries.”

NOTE: We are planning on being at the conference. Let us know if you’d like to meet with us there.

The Bunker Blog: Organized Retail Theft - “Boosting For Billions” Airs On MSNBC

“On September 7th, MSNBC aired a 1-hour documentary entitled “Boosting For Billions” which took a serious look at the growing problem of Organized Retail Theft.  The program featured interviews with Jerry Biggs, ORC Division Coordinator at Walgreens, and Tony Heredia, Director, Assets Protection at Target Corporation.”

Andy on Enterprise Software: A speedy investment

“It is good to see venture firms dipping their toes back in the water of innovative enterprise software companies. A couple of years ago I came across what I thought was an interesting data quality company called Zoomix. I introduced them to a prestigious venture firm, who were entirely uninterested, at the time chasing after ever more trendy social networking websites (the company was in fact bought by Microsoft a few months ago, which would have netted a pretty decent return for the investors).”

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By the Infoglide Team

Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds: Lottery Bandit Nabbed in California

“In May, alert SaveMart grocery store employees noted an individual attempting to cash in a on a winning lottery ticket reported stolen in the burglaries. . . . It’s pretty obvious that the alert employees at SaveMart were tipped off electronically that the ticket(s) being presented were ‘hot.’ . . . This isn’t the first time in recent history, the California Lottery Police have made headlines. In May, it was announced that they were using undercover agents to catch dishonest retailers, who were cheating winners out of their prizes. Winning tickets of $500 to $25,000 were presented to retailers and several of them were caught pretending the prize was smaller and keeping the proceeds for themselves. Several arrests were made throughout California as a result of the sting.”

Informatica Perspectives: Communicating the Value of Data Quality

“Many of our customers express frustration that even though it is quite obvious how their business suffers from poor data quality, they find it difficult to convince their associates to invest in initiatives that correct the problems. Earlier this year, we participated in Rob Karel’s Forrester research that addresses this issue. The resulting research paper is titled ‘A Truism for Trusted Data: Think Big, Start Small’ and its getting a lot of interest. . . . The report is available from Forrester’s web site. It contains some nice examples of how customers have built a business case for justifying investment in Data Quality.”

KRISTV.com: Squabble Heats Up Over Online Sale of Stolen Goods

“Lawmakers are pushing for a crackdown on online marketplaces, such as eBay, Yahoo, Overstock.com and others, for inadequate efforts to block the sale of stolen products on their platforms. . . . The proposed legislation is the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle over Internet intermediaries’ responsibility for their customers’ actions. Supporters of the bill want online marketplaces to more closely monitor transactions on their sites. They say the technology exists for the sites to track stolen goods sales, whether through targeting sellers who are known for proffering the products or hunting down frequently stolen goods.”

PogoWasRight.org: DHS Privacy Office - Privacy Impact Assessments

“The following Privacy Impact Assessments have been added to DHS’s site:”

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By the Infoglide Team

Wired Blog: Chertoff: I’m Listening to the Internet (Not in a Bad Way)

“The one thing we don’t want to do, because the culture of the internet is opposed to anything that smacks of government clumsy heavy-handedness, is that we don’t want to be sitting on the internet, like certain other countries do, where people suspect we are limiting what people can see. We don’t want to force people to do what they don’t want to do. We don’t want them to think we are intruding into their private space.”

AuctionBytes.com: Legislation Would Open eBay Records to Retailers

“House Resolution 6713 was introduced just weeks after the introduction of H. R. 6491, the Organized Retail Crime Act of 2008, which would require auction sites to cooperate with retailers and police and would allow retailers to sue over the sale of stolen merchandise. The National Retail Federation (NRF) issued press releases praising both proposals, stating that retailers lose between $15 and $30 billion to ‘organized retail crime‘ each year.”

Google Public Policy Blog: Now playing on YouTube: online family safety

“As a member and supporter of the Family Online Safety Institute, we are proud to let you know that FOSI recently launched its own branded YouTube channel. This YouTube channel represents one more example of how FOSI is identifying the best practices, tools, and methods for keeping kids safe online.”

The Bunker Blog: Charlotte, NC Shoplifting Statistics June 2008

“I’m afraid that, if we blame the economy, we’re just giving the thieves the excuse they need to steal more. If we ‘feel sorry’ for the thief who steals $150 shoes because times are tough, then we empower them to steal more because they feel entitled to our merchandise.”

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[Post from Infoglide] A Commitment to Solutions: What Harvard is Doing to Address Crime on MySpace and Other Social Web Sites

“Last week we focused on the issue of cybercrimes against children and how technology can play a role in preventing the victimization of young people on the Internet. One organization that is very much aware of the impact technology can have is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.”

PogoWasRight.org: AU: Google Street View told: keep off, private

“Privacy activists and individuals have accused Google of deceiving the public by breaking its promises only to photograph public roads for its Street View mapping tool and to promptly remove images flagged as inappropriate.”

Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds: Bills Introduced to Combat Organized Crime on Auction Sites

“Criminals often lure people to do their dirty work, also. Recruits are normally harvested off the Internet, sometimes from job sites, and offered work to reship stolen merchandise and or launder money from fraudulent transactions. . . . A lot of criminal activity is facilitated on auction sites by what is known as phishing. Phishing is where an account owner is tricked into giving up their account details, either via social engineering, or more and more often, after downloading some malicious sofware. The stolen account details are then used to take-over the account and use it for illicit purposes. In fact, eBay and PayPal accounts are frequently the most phished brands out there. . . . There is little doubt that a lot of the criminal activity on auction sites is sophisticated and reeks of organized crime.”

Google Public Policy Blog: Keeping kids safe in a digital world

“Technology is an invaluable tool for addressing some of these challenges. . . . When it comes to keeping kids safe on the Internet, we believe that education for families, support for law enforcement, and empowering technology tools, like our SafeSearch filter and the NCMEC software, are all critical pieces of the puzzle.”

Evolution of Security: Answers to Your Top 10 Questions

“Here are the top ten questions we received from our recent request. We tallied the number of times we received each question or a similar version of it and noted the total for each question below.”

PogoWasRight.org: UK: Airport fingerprint plan sparks a domestic dispute

“Human rights and data protection organisations have criticised Government plans to introduce fingerprinting at all British airports where departure lounges are shared by international and domestic travellers.”

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By the Infoglide Team

The Vancouver Sun: B.C. Lotteries says ticket retailers do not win more than the public

“Lottery retailers are no more likely to win major prizes today than the public, according to a report released Friday by the B.C. Lottery Corp. However, BCLC was unable to explain what appears to be a dramatic drop in retailer wins since new security measures were put in place a year ago. . . . The figures raised fears retailers might be stealing customers’ winning tickets — by, for example, falsely telling a customer his or her ticket was a loser. . . . BCLC has repeatedly said that it is not aware of any cases in which a lottery prize was paid to someone other than the ticket’s rightful owner.”

Hub Solution Designs: Governing Unstructured Data

“Given that many of the people I talk to or work with are building Master Data Management solutions for their companies, or putting together a Data Governance program, I had to stop and ask myself ‘maybe we’re all missing the forest for the trees here’. Granted, the picture on the structured data side of things needs improvement too. Companies still struggle to pull together the ‘Single View of the Customer’. Islands of data still exist, and artificial silos still cost companies money and hurt productivity. But I think we ignore the unstructured data problem at our peril.”

RetailWire: Monitoring Those Thieving Employees [requires registration]

“With billions of dollars being stolen from grocery stores by employees, retailers are increasingly having their security cameras aimed directly at cash registers to ward against employees using a scheme called ’sweethearting,’ which involves giving away merchandise usually to family or friends by not scanning it.”

The Iowa Independent: Iowa’s intelligence fusion center ‘connects the dots’

“Fusion centers are where the federal, state and local cops share intelligence, sift data for clues, run down reports of suspicious packages, and connect dots in an effort to detect and thwart drug smuggling, gang fighting and other menaces to society. The Iowa fusion centers have access to national data bases such as Law Enforcement Online and Regional Information Sharing Systems Intranet. They also have access to Homeland Security Information Network, but only the ‘controlled but unclassified’ version. Porter anticipates that with the addition of a Department of Homeland Security employee to the fusion center staff, the center will gain access to the ’secret’ version of the network.”

PogoWasRight.org: How much information is too much?

“Last month, PeopleFinders, a 20-year-old company based in California, introduced CriminalSearches.com, a free service to satisfy those common impulses. The site, which is supported by advertising, lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United States.”

b-eye.com - Business Intelligence Network - Industry Research: The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008

“In Forrester’s 151-criteria evaluation of enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform vendors, we found that IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects maintain their leadership positions, while Oracle and SAS Institute move into leadership positions in enterprise BI thanks to the richness of their functionality, ability to scale, and the completeness of their corporate and product vision and strategy. Actuate, Information Builders, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, SAP, and a new entrant, TIBCO Spotfire, came out as Strong Performers following very closely on the heels of the Leaders, offering very respectable alternatives and a multitude of choices for information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals.”

Realtime community: Privacy Concerns Of Google Walking Directions

“In the interest of time, here are just a few quick thoughts off the top of my head… Yes, as with any type of surveillance-based service such as this, there will always be privacy concerns. Here are just three of them.”

DailyHerald: Laws proposed to fight e-fencing

“Both Sen. Dick Durbin and Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott are proposing laws to target e-fencing. . . . E-fencing has become a $30 billion business, said Peter Gill, a spokesman for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association in Chicago.”

Mercury: ‘Crash for cash’ gang jailed

“A GROUND-BREAKING investigation into a criminal syndicate that organised a ‘crash for cash’ car insurance scam in Hertfordshire has led to the gang receiving a total of 10 years’ imprisonment.”

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[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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