Template Based Semantic Similarity for Security Applications

Today’s search technology delivers impressive results in finding relevant documents for given keywords. However many applications in various fields including genetics, pharmacy, social networks, etc. as well as national security need more than what traditional search can provide. Users need to query a very large knowledge base (KB) using semantic similarity, to discover its relevant subsets. One approach is to use templates that support semantic similarity-based discovery of suspicious activities, that can be exploited to support applications such as money laundering, insider threat and terrorist activities. Such discovery that relies on a semantic similarity notion will tolerate syntactic differences between templates and KB using ontologies. We address the problem of identifying known scenarios using a notion of template-based similarity performed as part of the SemDIS project [1, 3]. This approach is prototyped in a system named TRAKS (Terrorism Related Assessment using Knowledge Similarity) and tested using scenarios involving potential money laundering.