News item (April 13, 2016)

Building Partnerships: How interoperability leads to success

By Johann Hofmann, Director and Head of Griffeye

As law enforcement cases become more complex – whether because of geography or technology – having access to specialized solutions that work together seamlessly is more important than ever. That is why our recent partnership with Magnet Forensics, which allows law enforcement to easily use Magnet IEF and Analyze DI products together, is so exciting for our customers and us.

In a recent webinar we co-hosted with Magnet Forensics, we used a very powerful and important use case – child exploitation – to demonstrate the value of having tools that can speak to each other.

The importance of building partnerships

As Rich Brown, ICMEC’s law enforcement and technology liaison, pointed out during the webinar, Project VIC’s goal is to establish open data protocols and build relationships with partners to make workflows between tools easier. For instance, when law enforcement officers are assigned child exploitation cases, they often find themselves digging through thousands of images to find the smallest bit of information. And oftentimes, they must use a variety of tools to put all these pieces together to create the larger picture. However, if data has to be inputted every time a new tool is used, valuable time is wasted. This is where open data and interoperability come into play.

The webinar went on to demonstrate how Magnet IEF and Analyze DI – both tools that comply with Project VIC’s protocol – integrate to support law investigations. By loading Project VIC hash sets into Magnet IEF, users can then directly import data into Analyze DI and export it back into Magnet IEF. This showcased what is possible when Project VIC’s vision is implemented in the real world, when two tools can speak the same language and exchange information.

The future of integration

As demonstrated by the popularity of open APIs and interoperability, customers are demanding more from vendors, especially when it comes to the tools used by law enforcement. And when companies are working in important industries like law enforcement, it is their responsibility to integrate. With the impending release of Project VIC’s VICS 1.3 early this summer, the community of vendors can expect more effective integration among tools in the child exploitation space – allowing new types of information to travel between tools. With this update, users will be able to more freely choose the information that is needed in each tool.

As companies begin to take the steps to integrate with other vendors, we will see more tools begin to comply with the VICS standard. Utilizing interoperability and integration partnerships will be a positive way for vendors to support the needs of law officer investigators, allowing them to use the best of each tool in a way they see fit for each individual case.