Intelligence Enterprise

UPDATE: CrunchGear recently published a post on a UI inspired from Minority Report that was created by a company called Oblong.

I saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, over the weekend. Although I thought that the movie lacked the normal amount of gadgets commonly associated with a James Bond movie, there was a particular scene that made me think of the technology and visualization software that I use in my coursework at Penn State.

Analysts show Bond and M a new lead at MI6 HQ with an interface that displays geographical data integrated with suspect profiles. It’s no surprise that the interface resemables Microsoft Surface (product placement?). I wish my i2 Analyst Notebook graphs could look this snazzy.

The current visualization analysis industry standard in the U.S. Intelligence Communitys’ A-Space and much of law enforcement in the UK and Canada is i2 Analyst Notebook (the same software that Security and Risk Analysis majors are using in SRA 231: Decision Theory and Analysis). My own experience with this program has been somewhat of an annoyance. Much of the problem lies in the inability to quickly assemilate and categorize the data for analysis in these visualization tools. I’ve heard from some professionals that Analyst Notebook is more often used as an investigative or forensic tool after a crime or event has occurred.

James Bond may make it look easy, but it takes a lot of hard work and critical analysis to create a valuable intelligence product. The interface for presentation to a decision maker is only the icing on the cake.

I spent a lot of time this semester on the introspection of my academic, professional, and personal milestones. I’m almost half way through my sophomore year, but I feel that the clarity of my goals and motivation has been blurred. My experiences this year has diversified my ambitions rather then narrow them.

The 2nd annual Security Analysis and Risk Management Association conference last May gave me insight into the intelligence community and national security industry. My internship with Exelon Corporation gave me some perspective on the challenges of operational security in the enterprise and also provided an opportunity to participate on an innovation project within the company. The trip out to Google and San Francisco for the Google Online Marketing Challenge fired up my interests in entrepreneurship and the Valley. More recently, I signed up to work on a Kenyan social entrepreneurship project that will hopefully implement a prototype cell-phone based social network by next summer. All of these interests, whether at an intelligence agency, enterprise, or a start-up, share a common theme of innovation, responsibility, and technology.

Enter Intelent.

Intelent is a mashup of the words intelligence and enterprise. I based this idea on the theory that a decision advantage can be achieved by the fusion social media technology, operational security, and intelligence analysis. Maybe one day I’ll take this to next level and create a startup. For now, the Intelent blog will focus on issues in technology, entrepreneurship, security, and intelligence.