Digital Reasoning Releases Synthesis Version 4
December 9, 2016
Digital Reasoning has released the latest iteration of its Synthesys platform, we learn from Datanami’s piece, “Cognitive Platform Sharpens Focus on Untructured Data.” Readers may recall that Digital Reasoning provides tools to the controversial US Army intelligence system known as DCGS. The write-up specifies:
Version 4 of the Digital Reasoning platform released on Tuesday (June 21) is based on proprietary analytics tools that apply deep learning neural network techniques across text, audio and images. Synthesys 4 also incorporates behavioral analytics based on anomaly detection techniques.
The upgrade also reflects the company’s push into user and ‘entity’ behavior analytics, a technique used to leverage machine learning in security applications such as tracking suspicious activity on enterprise networks and detecting ransomware attacks. ‘We are especially excited to expand into the area of entity behavior analytics, combining the analysis of structured and unstructured data into a person-centric, prioritized profile that can be used to predict employees at risk for insider threats,’ Bill DiPietro, Digital Reasoning’s vice president of product management noted in a statement.
The platform has added Spanish and Chinese to its supported languages, which come with syntactic parsing. There is also now support for Elasticsearch, included in the pursuit of leveraging unstructured data in real time. The company emphasizes the software’s ability to learn from context, as well as enhanced tools for working with reports.
Digital Reasoning was founded in 2000, and makes its primary home in Nashville, Tennessee, with offices in Washington, DC, and London. The booming company is also hiring, especially in the Nashville area.
Cynthia Murrell, December 9, 2016
Photo Farming in the Early Days
November 9, 2015
Have you ever wondered what your town looked like while it was still urban and used as farmland? Instead of having to visit your local historical society or library (although we do encourage you to do so), the United States Farm Security Administration and Office Of War Information (known as FSA-OWI for short) developed Photogrammer. Photogrammer is a Web-based image platform for organizing, viewing, and searching farm photos from 1935-1945.
Photogrammer uses an interactive map of the United States, where users can click on a state and then a city or county within it to see the photos from the timeline. The archive contains over 170,000 photos, but only 90,000 have a geographic classification. They have also been grouped by the photographer who took the photos, although it is limited to fifteen people. Other than city, photographer, year, and month, the collection c,an be sorted by collection tags and lot numbers (although these are not discussed in much detail).
While farm photographs from 1935-1945 do not appear to need their own photographic database, the collection’s history is interesting:
“In order to build support for and justify government programs, the Historical Section set out to document America, often at her most vulnerable, and the successful administration of relief service. The Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) produced some of the most iconic images of the Great Depression and World War II and included photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein who shaped the visual culture of the era both in its moment and in American memory. Unit photographers were sent across the country. The negatives were sent to Washington, DC. The growing collection came to be known as “The File.” With the United State’s entry into WWII, the unit moved into the Office of War Information and the collection became known as the FSA-OWI File.”
While the photos do have historical importance, rather than creating a separate database with its small flaws, it would be more useful if it was incorporated into a larger historical archive, like the Library of Congress, instead of making it a pet project.
Whitney Grace, November 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
CounterTack Partners with ManTech Cyber Solutions for a More Comprehensive Platform
August 13, 2015
A new acquisition by CounterTack brings predictive capability to that company’s security offerings, we learn from “CounterTack Acquires ManTech Cyber Solutions” at eWeek. Specifically, it is a division of ManTech International, dubbed ManTech Cyber Solutions International (MCSI), that has been snapped up under undisclosed terms by the private security firm.
CounterTack president and CEO Neal Chreighton says the beauty of the deal lies in the lack of overlap between their tech and what MCSI brings to the table; while their existing products can tell users what is happening or has already happened, MCSI’s can tell them what to watch out for going forward. Writer Sean Michael Kerner elaborates:
“MCSI’s technology provides a lot of predictive capabilities around malware that can help enterprises determine how dangerous a malicious payload might be, Creighton said. Organizations often use the MCSI Responder Pro product after an attack has occurred to figure out what has happened. In contrast, the MCSI Active Defense product looks at issues in real time to make predictions, he said. A big area of concern for many security vendors is the risk of false positives for security alerts. With the Digital DNA technology, CounterTack will now have a predictive capability to be able to better determine the risk with a given malicious payload. The ability to understand the potential capabilities of a piece of malware will enable organizations to properly provide a risk score for a security event. With a risk score in place, organizations can then prioritize malware events to organize resources to handle remediation, he said.”
Incorporation of the open-source Hadoop means CounterTack can scale to fit any organization, and the products can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. Cleighton notes his company’s primary competitor is security vendor CrowdStrike; we’ll be keeping an eye on both these promising firms.
Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, CounterTack was founded in 2007. The company declares their Sentinel platform to be the only in-progress attack intelligence and response solution on the market (for now.) Founded way back in 1968, ManTech International develops and manages solutions for cyber security, C4ISR, systems engineering, and global logistics from their headquarters in Washington, DC. Both companies are currently hiring; click here for opportunities at CounterTack, and here for ManTech’s careers page.
Cynthia Murrell, August 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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