Identity resolution – Strategic goals for an MDM implementation
Recently I was watching the movie “21” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_(2008_film)) in sitcom, where students from MIT including a professor was able to use probability and sign language to win millions of dollars from multiple casino houses based out in Las Vegas. The movie featured usage of technology and manual investigators to help resolve the “identity” of the fraudsters using data points, and finally resulted in each of them being caught. So what is Identity resolution? As an organization it is an ideal objective to reach the strategic level in an MDM implementation. Identity resolution is basically driven out of the strategic usage of MDM implementation. Identity resolution means able to truly identify an individual based on his/her relationship.
Theoretically every person is connected to every other by at least “7 degree of separation”, so how one person identity gets resolved is dependent on his/her relationship with others, in the sample universe. Identity resolution is very critical to be used in tracking high risk candidates, who have the inherent ability to expose an organization or country to high collateral damage or risk. Identity resolution is usually done based on the relationship and anonymous factors where every individual is evaluated based on relationships which are intrinsic and extrinsic. Identity resolution is heavily leveraged in casinos to prevent a scenario I have depicted above. Insurance firms and banks are using Identity resolution techniques to evaluate the risk propensity of the candidate and are investing heavily to eliminate the exposure to these risks. When we performing Identity resolution we refer to terms such as false positives (the inference is arrived at as identifical match, when it should not have been the same) and false negatives (the inference is identified as dissimilar match, when it should have been the same).
I was inspired by a blog by Dan power (http://www.identityresolutiondaily.com/527/the-growing-role-of-identity-resolution-in-mdm/) where he mentions in detail the growing role of Identity resolution in MDM. Various vendors have tried to capture this space with IBM, providing a major marketing initiative to various governmental agencies in India about the Entity Analytical System (EAS) based solution. Informatica has recently acquired Address Doctor to build heavily on the Identity resolution capability. The digital asset and foot print left by each of us in the Internet (be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, etc) will now have a major implication on how our Identity gets resolved. Big brother is watching us, so let us be aware on what crumbs we leave in the digital world.
