Background

Frequently, the most onerous problem for analysts and investigators is not the creation of new intelligence by beating the streets looking for evidence. Rather, analysts find themselves snowed in by too much data. The central problem of intelligence analytics today is how to navigate and exploit very large datasets (e.g., billions/trillions of data elements) from disparate sources that include structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Frequently these databases are marred with missing, unavailable, or incorrect information, and “facts” are confused with “assertions.”

An analytics tool must alleviate the burden of these issues and provide a reliable environment where analysts can collaborate, save, iterate, and promote their multiple, subjective perspectives as they gain understanding of criminal or terrorist activity. This is precisely what LYNXeon is designed to accomplish.

LYNXeon

LYNXeon is a scalable, high performance, enterprise-ready platform. The platform is offered as a set of two interoperating components: LYNXeon Server and LYNXeon Analyst Studio.

LYNXeon Server enables the ingest of existing databases, graph storage, search, and sophisticated analytics. Graph pattern search (i.e., subgraph isomorphism) uses the implementation of 21CT’s Pattern Query Language (PQL©), providing a robust means of formulating complex, link-oriented queries.

Powerful analytical components are provided with LYNXeon Server, including 21CT’s award-winning Cluster Analysis algorithm, as well as Association Discovery, which helps automatically “connect the dots” between any two entities of interest. LYNXeon Cluster Analysis is patent-pending technology for detecting significant relationships (social groups / trust groups) within a social group or organization. The groundbreaking clustering technique performs without pre-existing knowledge of categories or classifications and has applications in telecom call analysis and criminal network discovery.

LYNXeon's Association Discovery technology allows it to generate Derived Links: complex linkages presented as direct linkages, e.g., attendance at a meeting can imply links among attendees. Given two nodes of interest, LYNXeon can discover and show the paths in the database that connect them. LYNXeon uses innovative methods to intelligently exclude irrelevant or computationally intractable paths. Results are returned in seconds, even over databases of millions of nodes and connections.

In addition, LYNXeon Server provides an execution environment on which to build custom analytical components (called Stored Procedures) that can leverage the various services comprising the LYNXeon platform. Custom analytical components offer the ability to extend the LYNXeon platform to serve domain-specific needs. For instance, if there are common, repetitive tasks desired by the analyst, such as complex, multi-step queries, or import/export or transformation tasks, these tasks can be scripted and exposed through context menus in Analyst Studio.

LYNXeon Analyst Studio is a workstation tool for accessing the LYNXeon Server platform. Analysts can explore the link store using a flexible, intuitive, drag-and-drop “canvas,” known as Link Explorer. Time-sensitive elements are managed using a timeline control. Analyst Studio also offers a GIS viewer, based on OpenGIS standards, for viewing maps and LYNXeon-generated GIS feature files, layered as desired with other features from external systems. The combination of link exploration with geospatial viewing allows the analyst to cycle and query among the relational network and geospatial perspectives where each informs and feeds the other, all within the same tool.

Key Capabilities

• Geospatially-enabled link analysis
• Graph pattern matching
• Pattern query language (PQL©)
• Cluster analysis
• Association Discovery
• Open, extensible data modeling
• Extensible stored procedures

PQL© is protected by U.S. and other international Copyright laws

LYNXeon in the Operational Environment

LYNXeon has been successfully integrated into 21CT's existing solution, GNET, which is a cyber defense and security solution developed for NASIC OL-LA that enables the graph processing over terabytes of records and search for strategic attacks interactively across huge data sets.