SAP NS2’s Mark Testoni: Data Digitization, Open Source Platforms Could Help in Law Enforcement, Intelligence Operations

Mark Testoni, president and CEO of SAP National Security Services, told CNBC Asia in an interview aired Wednesday that commercial open-source platforms that companies use for consumer sentiment can now be applied in intelligence and law enforcement operations.

Testoni said that law enforcement agencies have started to use such platforms to identify individuals who are associated with nefarious activities.

According to Testoni, data digitization has become an important part of investigative analysis on events that happen worldwide or within a country and that harnessing digital data could help anticipate events as part of counterterrorism efforts.

“We’ve often heard even going back to say 9/11 that we had markers or ideas in this digital round that we weren’t able to put them together,” Testoni told CNBC Asia interviewer Martin Soong during that channel’s “Squawk Box” program.

“We’re doing a better job in those domains today and commercial technologies coming along are going to make it even easier as huge amount of data explodes in the environment as it is right now.”

Testoni, an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2016, also described technology platforms that work to help identify potential terrorists through the analysis of their behavioral patterns in social media, interactions in online public domains and other digital footprints.

“Processing power through real-time data, in-memory database capabilities and algorithms, things… like machine learning offer tremendous potential in the areas of law enforcement and intelligence,” he added.