European National Police Agency
"This is amazing! Previously we paid a lot of money to external experts for delivering information connected with these [Bitcoin] addresses, and I was able to find out more in DataWalk in 45 minutes than they did in six months!"
Benefits:
- One common sharable repository for financial crime data (conventional and Bitcoin)
- Fusion of conventional analysis with cryptocurrency analysis
- Ability to analyze vast amounts of data
- Analyze open source data (e.g., bitcoin blockchain) offline
- Hundreds of millions of named Bitcoin addresses available
- Accelerate the investigation process with better results
The Organization:
This national police agency is a centralized police force from one of the largest European countries (European Union and NATO member). The agency is organized under one central command with all officers assigned to one of 17 local operations' commands or dedicated specialist units working independently for the national commandant. The total number of officers is over 100,000.
The Problem:
The agency faced the challenge of having analysts who did not have a centralized, common analytical database. They used various programs such as Harris i2 to visualize entity relationships, resulting in data that remained on their individual desktops and was not shared. The lack of automation and big data capabilities hindered their ability to conduct comprehensive investigations.
In addition, as crimes associated with cryptocurrency continue to increase, there was a need to integrate Bitcoin data with traditional financial crime data in a single analytical environment. In response, the National Police sought a software solution that could handle the analysis of large amounts of data, consolidate information from various local police departments and databases into a single location, and track cryptocurrency transactions in offline mode.
The Solution:
After thoroughly evaluating different options, the agency ultimately decided that DataWalk® was the best choice for managing and analyzing data related to financial crimes. With DataWalk, a comprehensive and collaborative knowledge graph has been configured that enables criminal analysts and other users to easily access, connect, and analyze a wide range of data, including transactions, bank accounts, vehicles, phone numbers, people, entities, public registries, internet auctions, IP/Mac addresses, credit cards, and more. Additionally, data from the Bitcoin blockchain database has been incorporated, including all transactions (over 1B) and addresses (over 1B) dating back to 2009. All Bitcoin blockchain data is updated on weekly-basis. DataWalk provides these capabilities while providing military-grade security. This powerful tool has truly revolutionized the way this national police agency conducts investigations and analyzes data, all while being completely offline.
DataWalk enables the agency to connect data from many different sources, re-organize it around data sets of relevant business objects, and query via a knowledge graph.
Conventional Financial Analysis model
With the DataWalk solution, every time a new investigation is launched, a unique knowledge graph is easily created with a single click. This knowledge graph includes built-in analytical logic, enabling users to input data specific to their case, such as banking transactions, vehicle information, website addresses or anything else. The knowledge graph includes both local sets of data that are only accessible to the user conducting the investigation, as well as global sets that store data from all cases, allowing analysts to quickly determine if any attributes in their data have been connected to other investigations. This helps streamline the analysis process and improve efficiency. All findings can be visualized in DataWalk Summaries which provide the key information that users want to see at a glance, or in Folders that bring together a comprehensive view of all data about any element in the system, using data from all data sources. Through the knowledge graph, data can also be analyzed via visual no-code queries - which quickly execute over vast amounts of data - and via a robust link chart facility that enables automation.
Modern Cryptocurrency Tracking model
During an investigation, whenever a Bitcoin address or transaction hash is discovered (for example, on a suspect's mobile device or reported by a victim), it can be linked to all other analytical evidence from both the “conventional” world as well as Bitcoin blockchain data. This enables investigators to trace the history of Bitcoin transactions associated with that address using money flow visualization on a link chart. When the destination address is identified, DataWalk’s offline integration with the Coinfirm® database of address attributions enables analysts to determine the owner of the address of interest, whether it is a cryptocurrency exchange, Bitcoin ATM, darknet marketplace, mixer, user, or anything else.
DataWalk enables the agency to analyze Bitcoin blockchain data, and to connect that to other available data.
"This is a revolution for us having one analytical repository where all case-specific data can be ingested and analyzed regardless of its size. It gets more unique when it comes to cryptocurrency investigations. Having a single system designed for multiple types of analysis, including Bitcoin analysis, will help us propagate the analytical techniques and knowledge among analysts and other users."
Summary:
With DataWalk this large national police agency can not only take advantage of powerful new capabilities for identifying and investigating traditional financial crimes, but can also now analyze Bitcoin addresses/transactions, and connect cryptocurrency data to other data. These breakthrough capabilities enable a significant advance in the investigative capabilities of the agency.
Copyright DataWalk 2023. DataWalk is a registered trademark of DataWalk S.A., and Coinfirm is a registered trademark of Coinfirm Ltd.
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