Partner content: The scale of management-plane data has become a challenge which SS8 addresses using ‘a network within a network’ for operators and law enforcement agencies
Networks of all kinds are awash in management-plane data, from SNMP traps to platform telemetry. Real-time and batch analytics on that data can yield insights that hold the potential to drive up performance and security while reducing costs. Fine-tuning network configurations, detecting cyber threats, performing complex troubleshooting, and determining root cause for degradations and outages are all opportunities for applying operational analytics to drive toward business goals.
The sheer scope of the data available for network usage models is a critical challenge. From network operation center (NOC) technicians to law enforcement analysts, alert floods and data fatigue are becoming common. Effectiveness and efficiency are compromised because of increased human error, lack of understanding of the alerts, and the simple inability to process and make use of data beyond human scale. AI and machine learning offer the potential to consume massive network datasets on repetitive tasks and return insights based on them, producing value that would otherwise be lost by automating operations and improving efficiency, performance, and productivity.
SS8’s lawful and location intelligence environment operates as a network within a network for both communication service providers (CSPs) and law enforcement agencies (LEAs). As such, it offers network services such as certificate authentication as well as both generating and consuming its own set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to maintain a dynamic, self-healing cloud network. It interoperates with, draws from, and contributes to overall network operations and management. As AI and machine learning play a larger role in lawful and location intelligence, that interoperation with a complete end-to-end view will provide a growing opportunity for increased efficiency and productivity gains, as well as other business opportunities.
Network and Operational Efficiencies for CSPs and LEAs
AI and machine learning also play a growing role in the rapid evolution of monitoring and management tools that consume the data streams being emitted by thousands of network elements. Operations workflows assist network analysts with algorithms to identify patterns and anomalies of interest, correlate related events into actionable composite incidents, and generate value from network data.
These workflows often feed visualizations, reports, and dashboards for oversight and metrics tracking. They also target more action-oriented apparatus such as security information and event management (SIEM) tools or AI operations (AIOps) platforms.
As algorithms and the corresponding insights become more sophisticated, they become more capable of driving automated maintenance and self-remediation of network issues. AI excels at assembling large numbers of clues to understand availability, stability, and performance issues, as well as to make maintenance predictions.
AI workflows can apply that information to drive self-healing measures on the network, from restarting a service to changing a reporting threshold without human involvement. They can also incorporate human expertise without consuming staff resources, such as by automated selection and execution of resolution scripts and configuration files.
Bringing similar workflow automation to bear on the lawful and location intelligence domain promises efficiency enhancements as well as the ability to identify insights that would otherwise have been overlooked. Automated agents can poll live information sources to investigate a subject of interest, for example, making conclusions about where to look next and pursuing their own dynamic investigative paths. By gathering, collating, and drawing possible conclusions from all available information, AI can act as a resource multiplier for lawful and location intelligence, just as it does for network operations.
Empowering Analysts with Evolving AI
The historic focus of deep learning and AI on machine-to-machine workflows is rapidly expanding, as generative AI (GenAI) adds the ability to produce and understand human language. GenAI is being rapidly adopted across industries—including by CSPs and LEAs—for its ability to drive new usage models, create efficiencies, and reduce costs.
Chatbot attendants provide a growing proportion of customer contact, while human support agents often collaborate with AI assistants for better effectiveness.
In the lawful and location intelligence domain, GenAI agents will help researchers and analysts streamline and improve the process of digesting and drawing value from massive datasets, surfacing insights to accelerate investigations. The semantic nature of GenAI allows system resources to assess and interpret information in novel ways, then communicate conclusions back to investigators using natural language.
For example, an operator could prompt the system to summarize relationships and hierarchies within a criminal organization, automatically producing a report with new insights. Law enforcement analysts could augment their queries with bots that intelligently interpret and learn from available data to uncover insights they weren’t explicitly instructed to seek.
The mission-criticality of lawful and location intelligence argues against early adoption of new paradigms; as AI matures, these platforms will benefit from collective learnings across the industry. Software engineering will more seamlessly integrate GenAI capabilities into human workflows, offloading data tasks from analysts to enhance the pace and accuracy of interpretation.
Informed by international telecommunications standards, SS8 is evolving its platform to include automations and optimizations that enhance and extend lawful and location intelligence into the future.
About the author
Dr Keith Bhatia is CEO of SS8 and a Board Member. He is focused on growth, profitability, product development, client service, and strategic acquisitions and combines broad technical and market expertise to advance lawful, location, and data intelligence.
Keith has nearly three decades of experience in public and private telecommunications, technology, and IT sectors both domestically and abroad, including as SVP and General Manager at Comtech Telecommunications. He has also held executive roles at Neustar, Movius, ADC, and IP Unity and has an MBA in International Finance and a Doctor of Business Administration in Technology Forecasting. You can learn more about Keith here.
About SS8 Networks
As a leader in Lawful and Location Intelligence, SS8 helps make societies safer. Our commitment is to extract, analyze, and visualize the critical intelligence that gives law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and emergency services the real-time insights that help save lives. Our high performance, flexible, and future-proof solutions also enable mobile network operators to achieve regulatory compliance with minimum disruption, time, and cost. SS8 is trusted by the largest government agencies, communications providers, and systems integrators globally.
Intellego® XT monitoring and data analytics portfolio is optimized for Law Enforcement Agencies to capture, analyze, and visualize complex data sets for real-time investigative intelligence.
LocationWise delivers the highest audited network location accuracy worldwide, providing active and passive location intelligence for emergency services, law enforcement, and mobile network operators.
Xcipio® mediation platform meets the demands of lawful intercept in any network type and provides the ability to transcode (convert) between lawful intercept handover versions and standard families.
To learn more, contact us at info@ss8.com.