The Contextor’s most important asset to investigations is its ability to build links among pieces of seemingly unrelated information.What does a modern-day detective need to solve insurance, telecommunications and credit card fraud, money laundering cases, or even figure out who has breached homeland security and planned to commit a terrorist act?

In today’s complex world, such an investigator needs more than the instincts of Sherlock Holmes.

They need a way to quickly sift through millions of pieces of different types of information and make sense of the facts.

Contextor, a software product developed by Netanya-based Svivot Ltd. is a powerful tool that can make the investigator’s job much easier.

“There are countless examples of fraud and money-laundering in the world,” said Dr. Alix Ginsburg, the company’s Vice President, Strategic Business Development. “There is financial institution fraud, Medicare/Medicaid fraud against the government, fraud, credit card fraud, white collar crime against employers, health care fraud, insurance fraud and, of course, money-laundering related to terrorism, drugs, prostitution, slavery, pornography and pedophilia.

“All of these areas require a sophisticated, robust tool to ferret out the information that lies buried in structured and unstructured data sources,” she added.

What Contextor does is known in the world of information systems as ‘link analysis.’ Previously, data information systems have been focused merely on storing and retrieving large amounts of information.

But knowing how to make sense of the information has become increasingly important. Link analysis ultimately leads to intelligence knowledge creation, providing investigators with a means of making inferences, a crucial part of complex investigations.

Contextor’s most important asset to investigations is its ability to facilitate the process of building links among pieces of seemingly unrelated information.

“Contextor’s technology addresses the complexity of multiple entities and multiple types of relationships in a manner that allows analysis of large amounts of information in a short period of time. The links inferred from this analysis are then presented,” Sam Roth, Svivot’s Executive Vice President, Corporate Development told Israel21c.

The company will soon begin marketing Contextor in the U.S. market, where according to company sources there appears to be significant interest. Contextor’s creators believe that their product will eventually become a valuable tool in a number of key industries in the U.S. According to the FBI’s Economic Crimes Unit (which investigates fraud) $67 billion is lost every year in the U. S. due to fraudulent insurance claims, escalating the costs of insurance.

In the financial sector the FBI views Financial Institution Fraud (FIF) as a huge problem. Suspicious Activity Reports filed by U.S. financial institutions equaled roughly $2.8 billion in losses in the year 2000. And some estimates value fraud in the telecommunications industry to be as high as $15 billion a year and credit card fraud to be greater than $10 billion annually.

Contextor is already being used by some of Israel’s leading companies, including the country’s security services and the Justice Ministry’s Money Laundering Prohibition Authority.