Published on the 16/04/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Big data analytics could be harnessed to support the Australian Government’s recently announced crackdown on crystal methamphetamine, aka ice…
According to the Wynyard Group the Government’s National Ice Action Strategy could benefit from big data analytics that could help narrow down persons of interest for police to then pursue.
According to Jon Piercey, Wynyard’s Asia Pacific vice president, data analysis could be used to both identify and disrupt the supply of drugs to the Australian market. He said that it was possible for law enforcement agencies to analyse data posted on social networks, and combine that with legally sanctioned searches of fixed and mobile phone records to essentially triangulate the supply of drugs.
He said that Wynyard’s search algorithms were particularly valued for tackling “pathfinder queries” in large and seemingly unrelated collections of data which could quickly identify links that might remain difficult to identify by human analysts armed only with spreadsheets.
The listed NZ-based crime analytics and threat assessment company boosted its local capabilities by opening an Asia Pacific Operation Centre in Sydney last year.
Wynyard, which was born out of Kiwi software business Jade, already has a strong crime analytics pedigree, having bought its investigating case management solution from the Australian Federal Police and its digital forensics solution from the NZ Police.
The company supplies software and services to government departments, banks and other organisations which must adhere to anti money laundering and counter terrorism financing regimes. It writes algorithms that can scour everything from financial transactions to mobile phone records in a bid to identify patterns that might suggest criminal activity, hence the company’s interest in the new anti-ice campaign.
Wynyard, which last year reported revenues of NZ$26 million, and a surge in government sales which rose from 24 percent to 37 percent of all business, is currently working on what it describes as a next generation big data platform, with a Silicon Valley-based partner.
Piercey said that the company planned to start rolling out that new platform from July. At present Wynyard uses an object oriented database to store information for analysis. Piercey said that scaled reasonably well but was inadequate for the sorts of big data analysis that will be required in the future.
He declined to name the company Wynyard is working with, but said that the new platform would not be a Hadoop-based system.
