K2 Global Consulting

If you run your own enterprise, you know you generate a huge amount of data every day, and chances are you allocate significant chunk of your marketing or research budget to  mining and interpreting these data.

Given the importance of big data today, it is surprising that most firms continue to view data analytics solely as a tactical tool. They overlook the advantage their data can provide as a risk management tool . At K2 Global, we advise our clients to get to know their data not only to find opportunities, but to understand and address their own vulnerabilities.

What does this sort data awareness mean in practice? It means you won’t be surprised by what your company’s e-mail servers, document archives, and phone records reveal to malicious actors who hack through your firewall . . . or those might already be working behind it.

It means that legitimate investigators and regulators will be less likely to surprise you if one of your employees turns out to be masking illegal or ill-advised behavior.

It means you are able to respond to public relations problems when competitors or the press publish out-of-context information about your company.

Pleading ignorance is no defense; you need to understand — and employ — the same methods that third parties would use to analyze your data.  You need to know the stories your records tell, the patterns your employees’ interactions reveal, and the ways in which that information might be used.

K2 has made it a priority to acquire and build the “military grade” technologies  that can interrogate these massive data sets. With these tools, we can tease the important narratives out of mass of data your company already possesses.

The results of these analyses can reveal:

• Influential actors in communication networks via phone or e-mail record analysis
• Anomalous behavior among members of online social networks
• Suspicious trading, transaction or purchasing patterns
• Conflicts of interest among executive and board members via extensive relationship mapping
• Money laundering risks

By analyzing your data along these lines, you’ll be better prepared to design effective compliance programs, demonstrate your diligence to regulators, and counter the attacks of malicious actors. If you use technologies and research methods that are equal to or superior to those used by third-parties, as we do at K2, you can be confident that you’ll know your data better than anyone ever will.