IM Relationship Resolution Information Center, Version 4.2

Overview of IBM Relationship Resolution

IBM® Relationship Resolution helps organizations solve business problems related to recognizing the true identity of someone or something ("who is who") and determining the potential value or danger of relationships ("who knows who") among customers, employees, vendors, and other external forces. IBM Relationship Resolution provides immediate and actionable information to help prevent threat, fraud, abuse, and collusion in all industries.

In many organizations, the raw data that represents identities and relationships already exists. The problem with most systems is that there is no simple way to manage, analyze, and resolve the volume of data that you need to gain the maximum insight from it.

With IBM Relationship Resolution, organizations can manage, analyze, and integrate data in real time from any source, such as customer databases, vendor lists, employee databases, regulatory compliance lists, and streaming data feeds. IBM Relationship Resolution sends real-time alerts to analysts, security, or other personnel for further investigation. IBM Relationship Resolution can also help identify the network value of customers or their market segments, based on a comprehensive view of the customer.

Using IBM Relationship Resolution, organizations can construct a central, dynamic entity database that can be used as a platform for all their knowledge-based applications. IBM Relationship Resolution integrates with other enterprise systems through a wide variety of protocols and technologies.

Recognizing identities

Using the core process of entity resolution, IBM Relationship Resolution resolves inconsistent, ambiguous identity records into comprehensive entities across multiple data sets, despite deliberate attempts at misrepresentation.

During entity resolution, IBM Relationship Resolution:
  • Determines when multiple records that seem to describe different entities are actually a single entity.
  • For each resolved entity, integrates the disparate identity records into a composite view of the entity, while maintaining full attribution for each record. Full attribution ensures that data is never lost and is always traceable back to its original source.
  • As new data is loaded into the system, IBM Relationship Resolution updates and manages the information in context for the entities in the entity database. It can completely comprehend the meaning of new or changed data as it is loaded, making the most of each transaction and enhancing the comprehensive view of each entity in the entity database.

Detecting relationships

Building on the entity relationship process, IBM Relationship Resolution detects relationships between entities in the entity database, as records from multiple data sources are loaded and processed.

During the entity resolution process, IBM Relationship Resolution:
  • Links entities by identity attributes, such as telephone numbers and addresses, to uncover relevant, yet non-obvious relationships.
  • Assembles networks of associations and entities using individual data attributes (such as identification numbers and names), locations (such as IP addresses or geocode coordinates), facilities (such as warehouses, schools, airports, or hotels), organizations (such as cells, clubs, associations, or gangs), money (such as cash or wire transfers), and accounts (such as loyalty clubs, banks, checking, credit, or savings).
  • Identifies suspect or interesting relationships, even those that are hidden or disguised, and sends real-time alerts, based on a set of user-defined rules. IBM Relationship Resolution enables analysts and investigators to perform sophisticated searches against the entity database to further explore each related entity and every entity or attribute that those entities are linked to.

IBM Relationship Resolution also supports customizable rule-based exception reporting, so organizations can specify which entities resolved or which relationships detected trigger alerts.



Feedback

Last updated: 2009