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For instance, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 28,000 complaints related to COVID-19 fraud in 2020 and a record number of complaints overall, with reported losses exceeding $4.1 billion.
However, investigating networks of corporate relationships, which could include multiple third-party vendors and subcontractors, and shell corporations is no easy task due to the complexity of the networks and limited resources of investigators.
That 麻豆精品 S檚 why a University of Central Florida Cyber Security and Privacy researcher is working on a new project to make investigations into corporate relationships easier and quicker by creating automated tools that help investigators track complex corporate relationships.
The three-year project is funded by a nearly $1 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty award. Paul Gazzillo, an assistant professor in UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 , will lead the research.
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Gazzillo 麻豆精品 S檚 approach to tracking corporate relationships that are obfuscated in complex systems is to make disparate systems 麻豆精品 S渢alk 麻豆精品 S� to each other.
麻豆精品 S淭he key challenge is the gap between existing corporate relationship data 麻豆精品 S� which are described informally in natural language 麻豆精品 S� what humans are used to, and automated reasoning tools, which expect a highly formalized logical language that computers can work with more easily, 麻豆精品 S� he says.
To overcome this challenge, the researcher will work to define corporate relationship data in machine-readable terms, use machine transformation techniques to convert relationship data in existing datasets, and create algorithms that can automatically analyze and report on the data.
麻豆精品 S淚f successful, our research will act as an investigative force multiplier for national and economic security, such as FBI special agents tracking financial crime through the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency and investigators rooting out foreign influence on defense subcontractors, 麻豆精品 S� Gazzillo says. 麻豆精品 S淏y automating tracking, we can reduce the time needed to trace and record connections between entities, which will both accelerate investigations and reduce human error. This in turn should allow an investigator to explore more vulnerable corporate connections and take on more cases in less time compared to manual tracking. 麻豆精品 S�
Gazzillo received his doctorate in computer science from New York University. He is a member of UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 Cyber Security and Privacy research cluster and joined UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 Department of Computer Science, part of UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2018.
