NAS (Network Analysis Server)

 

This is the application server which provides common services to all of the other components of SN-Sphere including analysis mechanisms and access to the database layer used in the analysis. These services are available to Svivot and third party clients and are used extensively by SN-Sphere's Contextor application as described in the section on Contextor.

NAS can currently execute two types of analysis: network link analysis and connectivity analysis. Additional types of analysis are under development.

Network Link Analysis

Network link analysis uses LSI to infer links between entities in order to expose and analyze network associations. A network is composed of one or more types of entities such as people, organizations and financial organizations. Different LSI may be used for inferring links between the different combinations of entities. The following matrix is a simple illustration of this concept for an anti-money laundering (AML) application. The same principles can be applied for any application using various types of data.

Each cell indicates examples of LSI which may be used for inferring links between specific types of entities. An AML application may analyze many types of entities using many sources of LSI.


 

Financial Institution

Organization

Person

 

Account owner/client

Withdrawal

Deposit

Transfer

Employed by

Pension Fund

Mortgage

Ownership

Employed by

Telephone number

Address

SAR information

Joint bank account

Family related

SAR information

Telephone number

Address

Monetary transfers

Person

Account owner/client

Withdrawal

Deposit

Transfer

Ownership

Loan

Monetary transfer

Business relationship

Ownership

SAR information

 

Organization

Transfer

Ownership

Consortium

 

 

Financial Institution

 

A suspicious individual, company, account or other starting point (target) is chosen for analysis. The user may choose one or more types of LSI (Link Support Information) and one or more relevant criteria for the system to use as an analysis model. For instance, a criterion for inferring links between two people based on monetary transfers might be that they both transferred money to the same third party within a certain period of time in amounts exceeding a particular threshold.

NAS uses the chosen criteria and LSI to infer links between the target and other entities (first generation) as well as links between the members of that generation. The system then continues a recursive analysis in which further links are inferred between each of the entities in the first generation and other entities thus creating a second generation. The process is continued for as many generations as the user has requested. The end result is a network of entities: who is involved and how are they related.

Until now, the use of link analysis has been limited due to the excessive amount of time it takes to execute such analysis when using even several tens of thousands of data records let alone millions or billions. Svivot has developed proprietary unique technology, called PreStar™, which allows the link analysis to be completed in a very short amount of time even when using massive amounts of data. NAS is specially designed to be able to work with PreStar.

Connectivity Analysis

Connectivity analysis determines if two or more entities are related in some way even if the relationship is indirect through many generations of separation. The system can find the shortest path of connectivity between the entities or all paths by which they are connected. NAS uses the LSI for the analysis. Contextor™ conducts the same type of analysis, but uses only information that has been previously stored in the Contextor repository. This includes the results of previously executed link analysis and manual links created by users and stored in Contextor.