Data Cleansing and Relativity Trace with Jordan Domash Part 1

Jordan Domash is Tom Fox’s guest on this week’s episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Jordan is the General Manager at Relativity, a company that makes software to help users organize their data. The platform is used by more than 180,000 people around the world to identify key issues. Jordan has been leading Relativity’s communications surveillance product for the past few years and has been in charge of the sale and development of the platform. He joins Tom in the first part of this two-part episode to talk about his role at Relativity, data cleansing, and how the Relativity Trace platform helps its customers.

The Importance of Data Cleansing

With the move to remote work, individuals have come to rely on different sources such as Slack and Microsoft Teams to communicate with one another. Jordan tells Tom that this has led to an explosion in the amount of data that needs to be actively monitored, and that there is a larger need for data cleansing. He shares how Relativity is tackling this issue. “We've spent a lot of energy on the past couple of years answering the problem of how can we sift through all that content, focus specifically on what's risky, and what's relevant to a compliance team with as little review as possible, and really focus on being efficient with our time and actually detecting risks that are important,” Jordan remarks.

Prevent Misconduct with Relativity Trace

Compliance regulators are very concerned with how companies are preventing misconduct before it occurs. Tom asks Jordan to explain how Relativity Trace can help businesses with this problem. “By having a really effective program, you are setting the expectation that this behavior is not being tolerated at your organization,” Jordan begins. Relativity gives organizations the tools necessary to take action as soon as an incident occurs instead of waiting months, or until there’s a formal investigation. Trace is implemented in a way that’s aligned to the specific organization using it. It starts with a code of conduct, and understanding the risks that are specific to that business. Trace gives compliance teams the ability to enforce that code of conduct, make sure that the risks to the organization are being monitored, and that any violations are being detected quickly.

Artificial Intelligence to Prevent Misconduct

Artificial Intelligence is used in three ways by Relativity Trace: to remove irrelevant content and junk, to pinpoint risk and misconduct and to add context to alerts that have been generated. Relativity has technology that removes spam, industry search reports and content that isn’t generated by a person. It strips out all non-human generated text from the monitoring process so that compliance individuals can only focus on the content that is potentially risky. “We bring the three or four or five most relevant communications to that alert to the forefront so the compliance officer can really focus on what the system is saying is the most relevant,” Jordan tells Tom. 

The Risk of Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is the majority of data that lives in a company that has no hierarchy associated with it. Unstructured data comes in many forms and poses a problem for professionals because it makes it hard to search across an entire system. This type of data requires a different set of technology. A lot of suspicious items may be hiding in unstructured data, and this poses a challenge to compliance officers. It will be hard for them to search for information on specific individuals if the majority of that information is hiding in the unstructured data. Organizations should be conscious of where unstructured data lives, and should have processes that can look for hidden risks and remediate them. 

Resources

Jordan Domash | LinkedIn 

Relativity