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Tag Archives: visual analytics
Visallo and Crime Tech Solutions: Partners in Crime-Fighting Software
Sterling, VA (August 24, 2017) – Visallo, the Sterling, VA based provider of investigation analytics software, and only true competitor to Silicon Valley giant Palantir, today announced a strategic partnership with Crime Tech Solutions out of Leander, TX.
According to Jeff Kunkle, President of Visallo, the partnership enhances his company’s suite of easy-to-use, web-based data visualization tools for investigative link analysis, data discovery, crime analytics and geospatial analysis with Crime Tech Solutions’ powerful and flexible Case Closed investigation case management software.
“Visallo is designed for intelligence analysts, law enforcement investigators, and fraud analysts who need easy to use tools to help them discover and visualize complex relationships within vast amounts of data without resorting to time-consuming, ad-hoc, and error-prone manual processes,” said Mr. Kunkle. “These are analysts that want to make sure they don’t miss important non-obvious insights during their investigations, want to produce more accurate, thorough, and defensible conclusions, and ultimately seek to be more accomplished investigators able to tackle the toughest cases.”
Tyler Wood, VP of Operations at Crime Tech Solutions added, “Where Visallo does much of the big data analytics, the Case Closed software is specifically designed for investigative process and major case management. The software manages the entire investigation workflow from start to finish and includes functionality such as task management, alerting, communications, evidence management, and a great deal more.”
Until now, investigative agencies had to turn to multi-million dollar solutions from behemoth multinational companies for this combined functionality. The partnership is designed to give customers more investigation functionality at a price point that can scale down to smaller groups. “For years, only the largest law enforcement and federal agencies could afford to purchase these types of advanced tools,” added Mr. Kunkle. “The partnership between Visallo and Crime Tech Solutions changes that reality.”
The companies have indicated that integration efforts are already underway to ensure a seamless and user-friendly experience.
About Visallo
Visallo helps investigators of all types produce more accurate, thorough, and timely analysis with a software platform to help them discover, visualize, and understand complex relationships hidden in massive amounts of data. Visallo’s all-in-one suite of easy-to-use, web-based, visualization tools and machine learning data analysis algorithms augment the investigator’s hard-earned experience and intuition with data-driven insights that would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover otherwise.
About Crime Tech Solutions
Crime Tech Solutions develops and markets a robust suite of powerful software solutions designed for intelligence and investigation teams. Their flagship products include the popular Case Closed™ investigation platform and IntelNexus™, an advanced criminal intelligence management software.
Crime Hot Spots and Risk Terrain Modeling
By Tyler Wood, Operations Manager at Crime Tech Solutions.
One of the many functions crime analysis performs is the identification of “hot spots”, or geographical areas that seem to be hubs for criminal activity. Identifying these hot spots through best practices in geospatial crime mapping allows law enforcement to focus their efforts in areas that need them most. The trouble that law enforcement and crime analysts have encountered is displacement – the fact that once a hot spot is “cleared”, crime seems to pop up again in a different location. The good news is that the displacement is never 100%, so policing hot spots is important – it’s just not a magic bullet.
To solve this problem, a team at Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice set out to develop new methodologies that would result in peaceful outcomes that are built to last instead of merely temporary.
The difference between the old approach and the new approach is stark. Where police and analysts used to focus solely on geographical concentration of crimes, Risk Terrain Modeling examines the factors that contribute to such dense concentrations to begin with. Rutgers team have identified several characteristics of any given geographical location which may attract or generate crime. Their technology takes these characteristics, which include socioeconomic data, physical layout, types of local businesses, etc… and uses them to calculate the likelihood crime occurring in the area. This allows law enforcement to be proactive in the prevention of crime in these areas.
The technique seems to be highly effective. After a trial run in New Haven, CT, police were able to identify sixteen “statistically significant risk factors that underlie violent crime occurrences.” A high percentage of violent crime in New Haven during the test period occurred in locations already identified by the concept of risk terrain modeling. Though the technology is still new, it is clearly showing impressive results already.
Shutting down hot spots is important policing, and risk terrain modeling technology allows analysts and law enforcement officers to be even more proactive in their prevention of crime.
The author, Tyler Wood, is head of operations at Austin, TX based Crime Tech Solutions – an innovator in crime analytics and law enforcement crime-fighting software. The clear price/performance leader for crime fighting software, the company’s offerings include sophisticated Case Closed™ investigative case management and major case management, GangBuster™ gang intelligence software, powerful link analysis software, evidence management, mobile applications for law enforcement, comprehensive crime analytics with mapping and predictive policing, and 28 CFR Part 23 compliant criminal intelligence database management systems.)
Crime Tech Solutions Acquires Case Closed Software
June 1, 2016 (Austin, TX) Crime Tech Solutions, LLC, a leading provider of analytics and investigation software for law enforcement and commercial markets, today announced that it has acquired Cleveland, TN based Case Closed Software in a cash transaction. The terms of the deal were not released, but according to Crime Tech Solutions’ founder and president Douglas Wood, the acquisition brings together two dynamic and fast-growing software companies with an unparalleled complement of technologies.
“For Crime Tech Solutions, the opportunity to add Case Closed Software into the fold was too good to pass up” said Mr. Wood. “We think that the technology offered by Case Closed helps to further differentiate us in the market as the price performance leader for this type of investigative solution.”
Crime Tech Solutions, based in the city of Leander, TX, delivers advanced analytics and investigation software to commercial investigators and law enforcement agencies across the globe. Their solution suite includes criminal intelligence software, sophisticated crime analytics with geospatial mapping, and powerful link analysis and visualization software. The company says that the addition of Case Closed Software expands those offerings even further.
Case Closed Software develops and markets investigative case management software specifically designed for law enforcement agencies. The suite is built around four primary software products including best-in-class investigative case management software, property and evidence tracking, a gang database tool, and an integrated link analysis and data visualization tool. The company also plans to release the solution as Case Closed Cloud for cloud-based access.
“Case Closed couldn’t be happier than to be joining Crime Tech Solutions,” said Keith Weigand, the company’s founder. “The blending of our technologies creates a suite that will add tremendous value to our mutual customers, and will be hard for others to duplicate.”
According to both Mr. Weigand and Mr. Wood, the name Case Closed will continue on as the product brand, given its widespread popularity and loyal customer base. Crime Tech Solutions is expected to retain all Case Closed employees, with Mr. Weigand joining as the company’s chief technical officer.
Crime Tech Solutions says it expects continued growth via ongoing software sales and strategic acquisitions.
About Crime Tech Solutions
(NOTE: Crime Tech Solutions is an Austin, TX based provider of crime and fraud analytics software for commercial and law enforcement groups. Our offerings include sophisticated Case Closed™ investigative case management and major case management, GangBuster™ gang intelligence software, powerful link analysis software, evidence management, mobile applications for law enforcement, comprehensive crime analytics with mapping and predictive policing, and 28 CFR Part 23 compliant criminal intelligence database management systems.)
Link Analysis and Crime – An examination.
Posted by Tyler Wood, Operations Manager at Crime Tech Solutions
The topic of fraud is widely discussed, and the focus of thousands upon thousands of articles. Television shows such as Crime, Inc and American Greed have become popular due, in part, to our fascination with the topic of fraud.
The organizations that are affected by fraud are also fascinated… but for entirely different reasons. Some estimates suggest that the US economy loses 11 trillion dollars each year due to one form of fraud or another. It’s little wonder, therefore, that the companies most frequently defrauded have been heavily investing in anti-fraud technologies at an increasing rate over the past decade or more.
The biggest problem with fraud, of course, is that it is always evolving in a very Darwinian fashion. Like a living, breathing entity, fraud schemes change over time in order to survive. As the targets of fraud schemes put new policies, procedures and/or systems to deter the activities, the schemes modify and find new ways to survive.
So, since the nature of criminal activity is such that they constantly change, how do investigators find a fool proof methodology to ensure they are 100% safe from them? The answer, of course, is that they can’t. They never will; at least not until we live in a world such as the one depicted in the 2002 film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise. In that movie, criminals are arrested prior to committing a crime based upon the predictions of psychics called ‘Precogs’. Corporations and individual targets of fraud can only wish.
Nope, there are no Precogs running around locking up would-be practitioners of fraud that would protect banks, insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare programs, victims of Ponzi schemes, victims of identity theft, and countless others. Instead, organizations rely upon skilled knowledge workers using purpose-built crime and fraud analytics technology that can detect anomalies in patterns, suspicious transactions, hotspot mapping, networks of fraudsters, and other sophisticated data analytics tools.
Crime and fraud analytics
Any discussion of analytics and investigation software must touch upon the topic of ‘big data’. No longer just a buzz word, big data literally fuels the insights gathered by organizations in every area of business. Naturally, then, organizations who have been traditionally targeted by fraudsters have increasingly invested in crime technology such as investigation software and analytics in order to exploit the phenomenon.
Of course, big data in and by itself does nothing. It just sits there. Nobody has ever yelled “Help! We’ve been defrauded! Call the big data!” Big data is only useful when it can be transformed into ‘smart data’. In other words, understanding the big picture of costly fraudulent activities is not akin to understanding the specifics of ‘who’ is defrauding you, and ‘how’ they are doing it.
Those questions can best be answered through the powerful data mining and link analysis software tools offered by Austin, TX based Crime Tech Solutions in partnership with Sterling, VA based Visallo. Effective link analysis complements big data analytics platforms, helping to expose previously undetected fraud, and the entities (people or organizations) committing it.
Link Analysis – Transforming big data into smart data
By definition, link analysis is a data analysis technique that examines relationships among people, places, and things. As a visual tool, link analysis provides users a powerful method to quickly understand and ‘see’ what is happening. Because of this, it is widely used by financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies to uncover criminal networks, improve fraud investigations, detect insider fraud, and expose money laundering schemes. Similarly, government agencies use link analysis to investigate fraud, enhance screening processes, uncover terrorist networks and investigate criminal activities.
At Crime Tech Solutions, we liken the question of how to detect and deter fraud to ‘How do you eat an elephant?’ The answer, of course, is one bite at a time. If big data is the elephant, comprehensive link analysis software is part of the one ‘bite’ at a time. Or should we say ‘byte’.
(NOTE: Crime Tech Solutions is an Austin, TX based provider of investigation software and analytics for commercial and law enforcement groups. We proudly support the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIU) and International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA). Our offerings include sophisticated link analysis software, an industry-leading investigation case management solution, and criminal intelligence database management systems.)
Part Two: Major Investigation Analytics – Big Data and Smart Data
Posted by Douglas Wood, Editor.
As regular readers of this blog know, I spend a great deal of time writing about the use of technology in the fight against crime – financial and otherwise. In Part One of this series, I overviewed the concept of Major Investigation Analytics and Investigative Case Management.
I also overviewed the major providers of this software technology – Palantir Technologies, Case Closed Software, and Visallo. The latter two recently became strategic partners, in fact.
The major case for major case management (pun intended) was driven home at a recent crime and investigation conference in New York. Full Disclosure: I attended the conference for educational purposes as part of my role at Crime Tech Weekly. Throughout the three day conference, speaker after speaker talked about making sense of data. I think if I’d have heard the term ‘big data’ one more time I’d have gone insane. Nevertheless, that was the topic du jour as you can imagine, and the 3 V’s of big data – volume, variety, and velocity – remain a front and center topic for the vendor community serving the investigation market.
According to one report, 96% of everything we do in life – personal or at work – generates data. That statement probably best sums up how big ‘big data’ is. Unfortunately, there was very little discussion about how big data can help investigate major crimes. There was a lot of talk about analytics, for sure, but there was a noticeable lack of ‘meat on the bone’ when it came to major investigation analytics.
Nobody has ever yelled out “Help, I’ve been attacked. Someone call the big data!”. That’s because big data doesn’t, in and by itself, do anything. Once you can move ‘big data’ into ‘smart data’, however, you have an opportunity to investigate and adjudicate crime. To me, smart data (in the context of investigations) is a subset of an investigator’s ability to:
- Quickly triage a threat (or case) using only those bits of data that are most immediately relevant
- Understand the larger scope of the crime through experience and crime analytics, and
- Manage that case through intelligence-led analytics and investigative case management, data sharing, link exploration, text analytics, and so on.
Connecting the dots, as they say. From an investigation perspective, however, connecting dots can be daunting. In the children’s game, there is a defined starting point and a set of rules. We simply need to follow the instructions and the puzzle is solved. Not so in the world of the investigator. The ‘dots’ are not as easy to find. It can be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but the needle is actually broken into pieces and spread across ten haystacks.
Big data brings those haystacks together, but only smart data finds the needles… and therein lies the true value of major investigation analytics.
Investigating the Investigations.
Posted by Douglas Wood, Editor.
A few years ago, I read a book called Fraud Analytics by Delena Spann. Ms. Spann is with the U.S. Secret Service, Electronic & Financial Crimes Task Force. The book is an overview of investigation analytics with specific information about some former technology leaders in this area.
The IBM i2 toolset is discussed, along with offerings from Raytheon, Centrifuge, and SAS, and FMS’ Link Analytics, and others. (My friend Chris Westphal, formerly of Raytheon Visual Analytics, by the way, published his book ‘Data Mining for Intelligence, Fraud & Criminal Detection’ a few years ago and is another one I strongly recommend.)
Both books offer advice and use cases on how technology can be applied in the fight against crime. A few months ago, I summarized the types of technology being put to use as tools to prevent, detect, and investigate fraud and other criminal activities. (It’s worth a quick read.) What I’m investigating today, however, is… well, investigations.
“IMA is the most critical connection between technology and investigators.”
In my technology summary, I termed this area Investigation Management & Adjudication (IMA). IMA is the most critical connection between technology and humans within an enterprise fraud management ecosystem. Incorporating key elements of enterprise case management, collaboration, link visualization, information dissemination and knowledge discovery, this layer of functionality is designed to uncover insights which aid in investigating complex incidents. The result ought to be actionable visualization of critical entities, and documented results for potential litigation and regulatory compliance.
IBM i2 has long been considered a thought and market leader in this segment – deservedly or not. Palantir Technologies plays in this area as well. Perhaps no company is more in tune with this market, though, than Visallo with their leading investigation analytics platform. Each platform clearly adds value to investigation case management solutions by providing powerful, emerging functionalities that allow easy and intuitive consumption of data in any form. For investigators, the more data – and the easier that data is to consume – the better.
“Users want actionable intelligence, not endless queries.”
What makes for good IMA? A few things, actually. First among them is the technology’s ability to adapt to the way human beings think and act. Users want actionable intelligence, not endless queries. IMA tools, therefore, ought to interact with the investigator in a consultative way that a fellow investigator would. “Hey, have you thought about this, Mr. Investigator?” and “Maybe you should look at that.”
Second, IMA ought to have context. Technologies that simply point to two entities and say, ‘Hey these things look linked‘ are great but leave all of the thinking up to Mr. Investigator. The IMA tools that I like have contextual values associated to those links. ‘Hey, these things look linked AND here’s why that’s important’. Big difference.
Third, IMA should bring the investigations to closure. There are a lot of data mining tools out there that allow querying with case management. How, though, does the investigator get to the point where an investigation is solved and prosecutable? Once again, the most functional IMA products act the way humans do. They package up the results of the investigation in an easy-to-comprehend document that can be shared internally or with police. No loose ends.
“Every investigation ends with an investigator.”
Predictive analytics, big data, and real-time alert scoring are the current industry buzzwords. They should be. They’re important. At the end of the day, however, every investigation ends with an investigator. Putting the right tools in their hands is often the difference between success and failure in an entire enterprise investigation system.
That’s precisely what Crime Tech Solutions, LLC does. Please take a moment to look us over.
Part Two of this series is now available HERE.