How to Secure Cognitive Search Applications

Users want relevant results from their search queries. But, in addition, they want their search tool to “understand” what their queries mean based on context. In other words, know the difference between what was expressed in the query and what was intended.

That was the purpose of the algorithms—the tunable relevance calculations—created by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. One of the parameters that improved relevance was user interaction with results. More relevant results reduced the uncertainty inherent in search, increasing value for users and vendors alike.

In our 5-minute Guide on the Path to Cognitive Search, we describe cognitive search as a collection of search capabilities that increase relevance, convenience, and confidence with repeated use. For each of those capabilities, improvement or learning with repeated use is what makes the capability cognitive.

The Impact of Cognitive Search on Security

So, with cognitive search we’ve increased relevance, convenience, and confidence but what about security? Is there a cognitive version of security—one that improves with repeated use? Because, all other things being equal, cognitive search often uncovers information that’s not governed properly and exposes data to users who shouldn’t have access.

As Attivio CTO Will Johnson points out in a recent blog, our cognitive search platform can store security information in an index separate from content, which allows it to automatically preserve security permissions from disparate repositories. That’s what we call Active Security. It eliminates the drawbacks of the early and late binding approaches to access control. But this feature makes one large assumption: namely that the content owners correctly secure the data, which is often not the case.

Attivio’s cognitive security takes this one step further. It uses machine learning and text analytics to “teach” the system to spot potential security and data access vulnerabilities.

To learn more about the security features of Attivio’s cognitive search platform, check out our 5-minute Guide, Will Johnson’s blog on cognitive security, or attend our webinar with Will on Wednesday, May 10 at 2 p.m. ET, where you can ask questions.