Will Bushee on Deep Web and Open Source Data Technology in 2017
Our Deep Web and open source data technologies are a tremendous asset for our clients. Any Data-as-a-Service function we execute puts our clients in the best position to fulfill their specific needs and goals. No one understands this more than Will Bushee, our Vice President of Technology.
For years, Will has been working alongside our clients to get them the data they need. He also works with our development team to integrate whatever the custom needs are back into our processes.
Will points out that, when pitching BrightPlanet to specific clients, he always states that we work with data. But, what kind of data and what does that mean for you? The answer to that is almost always “data that fits your specific needs“.
Where the Data Needs Are
Product theft might not seem like something that can be halted through data. However, when you think about the number of knock-off products that come out of places like China, there is a lot of product and patent theft that continues to harm businesses. We now work with clients in processing Dark Web data from the TOR network, searching for stolen merchandise.
Luckily, the Deep Web technologies we’ve developed over the last 17 years automatically configures and harvests data from different websites to identify where these violations take place.
Our technology has also found a niche in the financial industry. According to Will, an immediate replacement card being sent if a institution detects fraud anywhere in the system is a relatively new phenomenon. This is done in an attempt to avoid even more fraudulent activity. BrightPlanet can help with early detection of potential theft.
Our Deep Web technologies are more human-driven than automated on purpose; you simply feel more at ease when you’re working with a person.
Today, we don’t license technology directly to clients but as a service to clients. We call this our Data-as-a-Service. Will has worked to assure our team of Data Acquisition Engineers are well-trained in our technology, fully understand the ins and outs of the Internet, and know how to actually get the data that’s relevant to our clients.
What Data-as-a-Service Looks Like
If you asked Will to explain what Data-as-a-Service looks like, he would probably start by telling you what it isn’t. We don’t offer a service to monitor and harvest the content of a few websites.
What we offer is the extraction of raw data from tens of thousands of starting URLs and millions of documents on the Internet that are related to your data problem or opportunity.
There are many examples of how this works. Will notes that, in the case of the financial industry, we can monitor actual card numbers and their expiration dates and put them in a structured format. Of course, we do this within the confines of open sources and federal guidelines.
You could pay a few hundred dollars a month for a widget that just sends you the raw, unstructured data. When we are working with data, however, we actually do natural language processing on the data itself and structure the data that is harvested to note the entities (aka keywords) that are most relevant to your project. Will explains that even if the data you want changes, our harvester picks it up.
Will is personally excited to see these capabilities expand in the future. The future looks promising as more people are realizing the potential of both Deep Web technologies and Dark Web data. Also, more analytics and data visualization platforms are being built out for structured data than ever before. This makes it easier for our clients to take the harvested, structured data they get from BrightPlanet and make use of it.
Deep Web Technologies Moving Forward
When it comes to the impact future technological trends will have on BrightPlanet, Will believes they will be promising. Clients will continue to be better able to leverage the data that BrightPlanet can provide them.
For example, maybe a client is searching for counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs. Since new sites are created everyday, it seems impossible to locate the information at an exact point. Because of this, we developed industry-leading source discovery techniques over the 17 years we’ve been doing this work.
These rule-based techniques work with or without the help of artificial intelligence analytics. This constantly improving process involves a lot of classification, tagging, and categorizing of content. With it, we are able to better identify new sources as they come in and add them to our recorded content.
Right now, fraud is a major concern for a lot of businesses. Fraud on its own is a very difficult problem to solve, but is even more complicated when you don’t know where to start looking. Will notes that with our source discovery techniques, we can harvest and segment Deep Web data that is related to a business’ specific case.
With the ability to conduct these investigative reports for our clients, BrightPlanet’s technology presents a much needed asset for those who are looking for data and the right solution to capture it and structure it. Will firmly believes that the technological component and Data-as-a-Service BrightPlanet brings to the table will be the cornerstone of reputation management.
If you are curious about what BrightPlanet can do for you and your business, tell us what you’re working on. We’ll put our minds and technology together to figure out how we might be able to help.
