By Christoffer Feemster
If University of Alabama student Benjamin Grizzell met financial guru Warren Buffett in an elevator, he just might pitch his fraud-fighting software, Proactive Forensics, this way:
“Recently a 10-year veteran chemist from DuPont was convicted of taking $400 million of DuPont's trade secrets from their computer systems and offering these secrets to a competitor.
“Also, less than a month ago, the second largest Bank in France accused a rogue trader of stealing over $7 billion dollars by overriding their internal control systems.
You have to ask yourself -- how secure is your firm’s computer system?
“Proactive Forensics would have prevented these crimes from occurring.”
That’s exactly how third-place winner Grizzell, a graduate student in computer science, pitched his software in the UA Year of the Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Competition held recently on campus. He was invited by Dr. Louis Marino, assistant professor of strategic management, to participate in the competition.
Proactive Forensics was created by Grizzell and his partner, Dr. Phillip Bradford, UA associate professor of computer science. “Looking through the glasses of University research, we saw a demand for such a product. It fit in well with the intellectual infrastructure and it clearly outlined a well-defined need,” Grizzell said.
Proactive Forensics performs role-based analyses of an organization’s stakeholders or employees. The system can be viewed as short-term and long-term internal anomaly detection systems, Grizzell explained.
According to Grizzell, the short-term analysis and reporting includes basic security metrics and statistical analysis. The long term-analysis includes data warehousing and data mining techniques. Both long- and short-term analyses are focused on general management insights as well as security issues.
“The PFI system has three primary objectives,” said Grizzell. “The first is to develop lead formation for management opportunities or suspected transgressions; to establish efficient user behavior data preservation; and to organize system structure for automated information understanding and discovery.”
Grizzell, originally from Davidsonville, Md., currently lives in McCalla with his wife. He graduated from UA in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is now the president and principal owner of Crimson Tech LLC, a computer consulting company serving more than 300 clients across central Alabama.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -