Patent Application
20190188804
None
The disclosure relates to the field of communications and social media monitoring, particular for the purposes of adhering to established compliance rules.
The rise in popularity of portable devices, and the increasing culture of sharing various aspects of one's life on social media has proven to be an evolving burden on regulating compliance by employees in the workplace. For example, employees of various companies are constantly found to be unintentionally including sensitive information in plain view when posting about mundane things on their public feeds, causing companies to pay hefty fines. The problem may only be getting worse. According to current trends, the number of connected devices per person continues to increase, and may reach 37 billion connected devices by the year 2020.
There is currently a lack of tools to monitor and control what users, who may responsible for sensitive information, post on their social media profiles or communicate through messaging services. What is needed to a system that monitors user social media profiles, and communications channels to ensure compliancy is maintained. Such a system should be able to keep records of compliancy maintenance, as well as provide training to employees to ensure they are knowledgeable about what is and is not allowed.
Accordingly, the inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, a system and method for automated social media regulatory compliance monitoring.
In a typical embodiment, a system is provided that enables monitoring of social media feeds, messaging services, and internet calls for content that may be inappropriate or prohibited due to regulatory grounds. The system may be configured to automatically being taking corrective measures when such content is found. The system may also keep records of various events to provide proof of maintained compliance.
A system for automated social media regulatory compliance monitoring is provided, comprising a compliance data service comprising at least a processor, a memory, and a plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operating on the processor, wherein the programmable instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the processor to: provide an interface for an administrative user to define at least a compliance rule, and store the compliance rule in a compliance database; a social media collection service comprising at least a processor, a memory, and a plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operating on the processor, wherein the programmable instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the processor to: monitor and collect data from at least a social source including at least a social media feed associated with a monitored user, and store the collected data in a social media data storage; and a compliance monitoring engine comprising at least a processor, a memory, and a plurality of programming instructions stored in the memory and operating on the processor, wherein the programmable instructions, when operating on the processor, cause the processor to: retrieve the collected data from the social media data storage, retrieve the compliance rule from the compliance database, and process and analyze the collected data to determine whether the collected data contains noncompliant content based at least on the compliance rule.
In another embodiment of the invention, after finding noncompliant content the system notifies an originator of the content to take corrective action. In another embodiment of the invention, a record of compliance is kept and maintained. In another embodiment of the invention, the record is recorded using a blockchain.
In another embodiment of the invention, the plurality of web sources is continuously monitored for suspicious activity for the purposes of preventing identify theft, and cyberattacks. In another embodiment of the invention, compliance training and testing is periodically administered to a plurality of users. In another embodiment of the invention, noncompliant content is determined from processing a plurality of datasets in context. In another embodiment of the invention, user-provided samples are also used by the compliance monitoring engine in determining noncompliant content.
In another aspect of the invention, a method for automated social media monitoring is provided, comprising: (a) creating a dataset by gathering data from a plurality of web sources including at least a social media feed using a data mining service; (b) retrieving the dataset from the datamining service using an analytical store; (c) storing the dataset using the analytical store; (d) serving a plurality of predefined rules using the analytical store; (e) retrieving the dataset and examples of noncompliant content from the analytical store using a compliance monitoring engine; and (f) processing the dataset to find noncompliant based at least on the plurality of predefined rules using the compliance monitoring engine.
The accompanying drawings illustrate several aspects and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention according to the aspects. It will be appreciated by one skilled in the art that the particular arrangements illustrated in the drawings are merely exemplary, and are not to be considered as limiting of the scope of the invention or the claims herein in any way.
The inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, a system and method for automated social media regulatory compliance monitoring.
One or more different aspects may be described in the present application. Further, for one or more of the aspects described herein, numerous alternative arrangements may be described; it should be appreciated that these are presented for illustrative purposes only and are not limiting of the aspects contained herein or the claims presented herein in any way. One or more of the arrangements may be widely applicable to numerous aspects, as may be readily apparent from the disclosure. In general, arrangements are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice one or more of the aspects, and it should be appreciated that other arrangements may be utilized and that structural, logical, software, electrical and other changes may be made without departing from the scope of the particular aspects. Particular features of one or more of the aspects described herein may be described with reference to one or more particular aspects or figures that form a part of the present disclosure, and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specific arrangements of one or more of the aspects. It should be appreciated, however, that such features are not limited to usage in the one or more particular aspects or figures with reference to which they are described. The present disclosure is neither a literal description of all arrangements of one or more of the aspects nor a listing of features of one or more of the aspects that must be present in all arrangements.
Headings of sections provided in this patent application and the title of this patent application are for convenience only, and are not to be taken as limiting the disclosure in any way.
Devices that are in communication with each other need not be in continuous communication with each other, unless expressly specified otherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with each other may communicate directly or indirectly through one or more communication means or intermediaries, logical or physical.
A description of an aspect with several components in communication with each other does not imply that all such components are required. To the contrary, a variety of optional components may be described to illustrate a wide variety of possible aspects and in order to more fully illustrate one or more aspects. Similarly, although process steps, method steps, algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, such processes, methods and algorithms may generally be configured to work in alternate orders, unless specifically stated to the contrary. In other words, any sequence or order of steps that may be described in this patent application does not, in and of itself, indicate a requirement that the steps be performed in that order. The steps of described processes may be performed in any order practical. Further, some steps may be performed simultaneously despite being described or implied as occurring non-simultaneously (e.g., because one step is described after the other step). Moreover, the illustration of a process by its depiction in a drawing does not imply that the illustrated process is exclusive of other variations and modifications thereto, does not imply that the illustrated process or any of its steps are necessary to one or more of the aspects, and does not imply that the illustrated process is preferred. Also, steps are generally described once per aspect, but this does not mean they must occur once, or that they may only occur once each time a process, method, or algorithm is carried out or executed. Some steps may be omitted in some aspects or some occurrences, or some steps may be executed more than once in a given aspect or occurrence.
When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readily apparent that more than one device or article may be used in place of a single device or article. Similarly, where more than one device or article is described herein, it will be readily apparent that a single device or article may be used in place of the more than one device or article.
The functionality or the features of a device may be alternatively embodied by one or more other devices that are not explicitly described as having such functionality or features. Thus, other aspects need not include the device itself.
Techniques and mechanisms described or referenced herein will sometimes be described in singular form for clarity. However, it should be appreciated that particular aspects may include multiple iterations of a technique or multiple instantiations of a mechanism unless noted otherwise. Process descriptions or blocks in figures should be understood as representing modules, segments, or portions of code which include one or more executable instructions for implementing specific logical functions or steps in the process. Alternate implementations are included within the scope of various aspects in which, for example, functions may be executed out of order from that shown or discussed, including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending on the functionality involved, as would be understood by those having ordinary skill in the art.
User frontend 110 may be a web portal, web application, mobile application, and the like; and may serve as an access point for a plurality of clients 156[a-n], wherein each client may be assigned various access privileges, for instance, administrators, managers, regular user, and the like. User frontend 110 provides functions such as notifications, monitoring dashboards, settings controls, and the like, which may differ and be granted on an access privilege basis. For example, administrative users may receive system-wide alerts of non-compliant content being found, while individual regular users may just receive a notification if one of their own postings are found to be offending.
Backend API 113 may be used by a plurality of third-party APIs 153[a-n] to allow for integration of system 105 into existing management systems. This may be desirable, for example, if a there is an existing management system already in-place, but the management system is lacking in the monitoring, and compliance training functions provided by system 105.
Workflow service 116 may be a central bus, and queueing service connects the various components of system 105. Workflow service 116 may queue requests, and route the requests to the desired components.
Social media data storage 119 may be a high-speed data store for storing raw data gathered by social media collection service 120 for use by compliance monitoring engine 130. Social media data storage 119 may also store user-uploaded reference data that may be used in analyzing and processing other information, such as, pictures of settings and landmarks, such as an office or a trading floor; documents, such as legal contracts, non-disclosure agreements, or drafts of upcoming announcements; specify buzzwords or slang that may be related to noncompliant occurrences in a particular setting; videos; sound clips; and the like.
Social media collection service 120 may be configured to autonomously monitor and gather from a plurality of social sources 159[a-n], and may comprise a message scraper 121, a feed monitor 122, and a call monitor 123. Message scraper 121 may be configured to collect messages from messaging platforms, such as, BLOOMBERG MESSENGER, FACEBOOK MESSENGER, SLACK, directing messaging provided by other social media platforms like TWITTER or INSTAGRAM, and the like.
Feed monitor 122 may be configured to monitor social media feeds, corporate websites, news feeds, and the like. To ensure a level of privacy, feed monitor 122 may be adjusted in how deep and thorough it may scan a feed. For example, restricting feed monitor 122 to scanning of a particular employee's feed and posted comments only, and not scan profiles of the employee's friends or followers to avoid invasion of privacy of users which have not granted permission for their feeds to be monitored.
Call monitor 123 may be configured to monitor and record voice communications, such as, SKYPE, GOOGLE HANGOUTS, WHATSAPP calls, and the like.
Compliance monitoring engine 130 may be a distributed computing cluster, such as APACHE SPARK, configured to processing data from social media data storage 119 for noncompliant content, and may use a plurality of modular machine learning (ML) models and services to process data that may improve over time as more content is captured and processed. ML models and services of compliance monitoring engine 130 may include, but is not limited to, an image analyzer 131, a natural language (NL) analyzer 132, a metadata analyzer 133, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) service 134.
image analyzer 131 may be configured to analyze images and videos to look for visible text, or identifiable markers provided by user-provided reference data. Visible text may be subject to optical character recognition (OCR), and passed to NL analyzer 132 for processing.
NL analyzer 132 may be configured to analyze text content, and transcribed audio for noncompliant content such as certain wordings, unintentional endorsements, sentiment indicators, buzzwords, and the like. This may be based on predefined rules set by administrative users, or user-provided reference data. NL analyzer 132 may also utilize fuzzy-logic in analyzing text.
Metadata analyzer 133 may be configured to analyze metadata of social media postings, and other communications data, such as, geotags, timestamps, and the like. For example, geotag info may place the origin of a social media posting made by a current employee at a restricted location, for instance, a competitor's office building. This may be used as additional context for processing of other data that may otherwise be deemed to be allowable under normal circumstances.
ASR service 134 may be configured to transcribe audio for processing by NL analyzer 132. ASR service 134 may also be configured to analyze voice imprints as a means for identification of parties involved in an audio recording.
It should be appreciated that compliance monitoring engine 130 may also be configured to recognize patterns within social media postings and other monitored communications to find occurrences of suspicious activity. This may provide an added benefit to users who have their accounts monitored, and may also serve as a means for proactive detection of possible vectors for data breaches.
Compliance data service 140 may be a server for general information, which may include, users, tests, reports, records, and the like. Compliance data service 140 may comprise a compliance record 141, a compliance trainer 142, a compliance database 143, and a rules engine 144 for storing the information. Compliance database 143 may be used to store data such as user-defined compliance rules, compliance records, compliance training records, compliance training materials, and the like. Compliance database 143 may also be used as an additional means of storing user-provided samples of non-compliant content, described above.
Compliance record 141 may be configured to keep records of compliance and non-compliance to show that a reasonable effort is continuously being made to maintain compliancy, and may store records in compliance database 143. Compliance record 141 may also keep track of statuses of current employee compliance training, and certifications. In some embodiments, records may be stored using a blockchain 150, which may be a timestamped, transparent, and tamperproof means of keeping a record of compliance. In addition to serving as a ledger for maintain compliance, smart contracts, an add-on technology of blockchain 150, may be used to capture compliance rules and user acceptance of monitoring.
Compliance trainer 142 may be configured to provide a compliance training program for users, and administer compliance knowledge testing. Testing may be administered periodically on a set schedule to ensure employees know the rules, and clients may be notified when a test is required. Tests may vary based on job position. For example, executives and managers may be required to undergo and pass a more stringent test due to their access of more sensitive information.
Rules engine 144 may be configured to allow a user to create and manage compliance rules, which may be used by compliance monitoring engine 130 as a basis for non-compliant content.
In addition to the enterprise and legal applications described above, system 105 may be used for general purposes, for example, as a tool for parents to monitor their child's online activity, or monitoring of students.
On the other hand, if no noncompliant content is found, system 105 determines that actions from administrators or other personnel are not required at step 618, and system 105 may put into records that no incident of non-compliance has occurred at step 621.
Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented on hardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, they may be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate user process, in a library package bound into network applications, on a specially constructed machine, on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or on a network interface card.
Software/hardware hybrid implementations of at least some of the aspects disclosed herein may be implemented on a programmable network-resident machine (which should be understood to include intermittently connected network-aware machines) selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in memory. Such network devices may have multiple network interfaces that may be configured or designed to utilize different types of network communication protocols. A general architecture for some of these machines may be described herein in order to illustrate one or more exemplary means by which a given unit of functionality may be implemented. According to specific aspects, at least some of the features or functionalities of the various aspects disclosed herein may be implemented on one or more general-purpose computers associated with one or more networks, such as for example an end-user computer system, a client computer, a network server or other server system, a mobile computing device (e.g., tablet computing device, mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, or other appropriate computing device), a consumer electronic device, a music player, or any other suitable electronic device, router, switch, or other suitable device, or any combination thereof. In at least some aspects, at least some of the features or functionalities of the various aspects disclosed herein may be implemented in one or more virtualized computing environments (e.g., network computing clouds, virtual machines hosted on one or more physical computing machines, or other appropriate virtual environments).
Referring now to
In one aspect, computing device 10 includes one or more central processing units (CPU) 12, one or more interfaces 15, and one or more busses 14 (such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus). When acting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, CPU 12 may be responsible for implementing specific functions associated with the functions of a specifically configured computing device or machine. For example, in at least one aspect, a computing device 10 may be configured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 12, local memory 11 and/or remote memory 16, and interface(s) 15. In at least one aspect, CPU 12 may be caused to perform one or more of the different types of functions and/or operations under the control of software modules or components, which for example, may include an operating system and any appropriate applications software, drivers, and the like.
CPU 12 may include one or more processors 13 such as, for example, a processor from one of the Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and AMD families of microprocessors. In some aspects, processors 13 may include specially designed hardware such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, for controlling operations of computing device 10. In a particular aspect, a local memory 11 (such as non-volatile random access memory (RAM) and/or read-only memory (ROM), including for example one or more levels of cached memory) may also form part of CPU 12. However, there are many different ways in which memory may be coupled to system 10. Memory 11 may be used for a variety of purposes such as, for example, caching and/or storing data, programming instructions, and the like. It should be further appreciated that CPU 12 may be one of a variety of system-on-a-chip (SOC) type hardware that may include additional hardware such as memory or graphics processing chips, such as a QUALCOMM SNAPDRAGON™ or SAMSUNG EXYNOS™ CPU as are becoming increasingly common in the art, such as for use in mobile devices or integrated devices.
As used herein, the term “processor” is not limited merely to those integrated circuits referred to in the art as a processor, a mobile processor, or a microprocessor, but broadly refers to a microcontroller, a microcomputer, a programmable logic controller, an application-specific integrated circuit, and any other programmable circuit.
In one aspect, interfaces 15 are provided as network interface cards (NICs). Generally, NICs control the sending and receiving of data packets over a computer network; other types of interfaces 15 may for example support other peripherals used with computing device 10. Among the interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relay interfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces, graphics interfaces, and the like. In addition, various types of interfaces may be provided such as, for example, universal serial bus (USB), Serial, Ethernet, FIREWIRE™, THUNDERBOLT™, PCI, parallel, radio frequency (RF), BLUETOOTH™, near-field communications (e.g., using near-field magnetics), 802.11 (WiFi), frame relay, TCP/IP, ISDN, fast Ethernet interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, Serial ATA (SATA) or external SATA (ESATA) interfaces, high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), digital visual interface (DVI), analog or digital audio interfaces, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interfaces, high-speed serial interface (HSSI) interfaces, Point of Sale (POS) interfaces, fiber data distributed interfaces (FDDIs), and the like. Generally, such interfaces 15 may include physical ports appropriate for communication with appropriate media. In some cases, they may also include an independent processor (such as a dedicated audio or video processor, as is common in the art for high-fidelity AN hardware interfaces) and, in some instances, volatile and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., RAM).
Although the system shown in
Regardless of network device configuration, the system of an aspect may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as, for example, remote memory block 16 and local memory 11) configured to store data, program instructions for the general-purpose network operations, or other information relating to the functionality of the aspects described herein (or any combinations of the above). Program instructions may control execution of or comprise an operating system and/or one or more applications, for example. Memory 16 or memories 11, 16 may also be configured to store data structures, configuration data, encryption data, historical system operations information, or any other specific or generic non-program information described herein.
Because such information and program instructions may be employed to implement one or more systems or methods described herein, at least some network device aspects may include nontransitory machine-readable storage media, which, for example, may be configured or designed to store program instructions, state information, and the like for performing various operations described herein. Examples of such nontransitory machine-readable storage media include, but are not limited to, magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media such as CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical media such as optical disks, and hardware devices that are specially configured to store and perform program instructions, such as read-only memory devices (ROM), flash memory (as is common in mobile devices and integrated systems), solid state drives (SSD) and “hybrid SSD” storage drives that may combine physical components of solid state and hard disk drives in a single hardware device (as are becoming increasingly common in the art with regard to personal computers), memristor memory, random access memory (RAM), and the like. It should be appreciated that such storage means may be integral and non-removable (such as RAM hardware modules that may be soldered onto a motherboard or otherwise integrated into an electronic device), or they may be removable such as swappable flash memory modules (such as “thumb drives” or other removable media designed for rapidly exchanging physical storage devices), “hot-swappable” hard disk drives or solid state drives, removable optical storage discs, or other such removable media, and that such integral and removable storage media may be utilized interchangeably. Examples of program instructions include both object code, such as may be produced by a compiler, machine code, such as may be produced by an assembler or a linker, byte code, such as may be generated by for example a JAVA™ compiler and may be executed using a Java virtual machine or equivalent, or files containing higher level code that may be executed by the computer using an interpreter (for example, scripts written in Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, or any other scripting language).
In some aspects, systems may be implemented on a standalone computing system. Referring now to
In some aspects, systems may be implemented on a distributed computing network, such as one having any number of clients and/or servers. Referring now to
In addition, in some aspects, servers 32 may call external services 37 when needed to obtain additional information, or to refer to additional data concerning a particular call. Communications with external services 37 may take place, for example, via one or more networks 31. In various aspects, external services 37 may comprise web-enabled services or functionality related to or installed on the hardware device itself. For example, in one aspect where client applications 24 are implemented on a smartphone or other electronic device, client applications 24 may obtain information stored in a server system 32 in the cloud or on an external service 37 deployed on one or more of a particular enterprise's or user's premises.
In some aspects, clients 33 or servers 32 (or both) may make use of one or more specialized services or appliances that may be deployed locally or remotely across one or more networks 31. For example, one or more databases 34 may be used or referred to by one or more aspects. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill in the art that databases 34 may be arranged in a wide variety of architectures and using a wide variety of data access and manipulation means. For example, in various aspects one or more databases 34 may comprise a relational database system using a structured query language (SQL), while others may comprise an alternative data storage technology such as those referred to in the art as “NoSQL” (for example, HADOOP CASSANDRA™, GOOGLE BIGTABLE™, and so forth). In some aspects, variant database architectures such as column-oriented databases, in-memory databases, clustered databases, distributed databases, or even flat file data repositories may be used according to the aspect. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the art that any combination of known or future database technologies may be used as appropriate, unless a specific database technology or a specific arrangement of components is specified for a particular aspect described herein. Moreover, it should be appreciated that the term “database” as used herein may refer to a physical database machine, a cluster of machines acting as a single database system, or a logical database within an overall database management system. Unless a specific meaning is specified for a given use of the term “database”, it should be construed to mean any of these senses of the word, all of which are understood as a plain meaning of the term “database” by those having ordinary skill in the art.
Similarly, some aspects may make use of one or more security systems 36 and configuration systems 35. Security and configuration management are common information technology (IT) and web functions, and some amount of each are generally associated with any IT or web systems. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill in the art that any configuration or security subsystems known in the art now or in the future may be used in conjunction with aspects without limitation, unless a specific security 36 or configuration system 35 or approach is specifically required by the description of any specific aspect.
In various aspects, functionality for implementing systems or methods of various aspects may be distributed among any number of client and/or server components. For example, various software modules may be implemented for performing various functions in connection with the system of any particular aspect, and such modules may be variously implemented to run on server and/or client components.
The skilled person will be aware of a range of possible modifications of the various aspects described above. Accordingly, the present invention is defined by the claims and their equivalents.
