- NCMEC assessed Cyan’s digital triage tool and believes it will work well to quickly and effectively identify child sexual abuse materials
- President and CEO John F. Clark states that based on NCMEC’s assessment, NCMEC believes Cyan Examiner will cut time, aid law enforcement and safeguard children
- Public statement builds on agreement signed between the two organisations in August 2019 to work together to tackle rising online child sexual exploitation
- This assessment supports Cyan’s projected growth and expansion into international markets
Edinburgh, U.K. – 10th December 2020 – Cyan, the Scottish (United Kingdom), based company delivering technologies to help law enforcement find evidence in child abuse and counter terrorism investigations, today announced a positive product assessment undertaken by one of the pivotal bodies in the global fight against child sexual exploitation. The results of NCMEC’s assessment builds on the UK Home Office adoption of the technology, which it described as ‘game-changing’, and Cyan’s first international sales.
The US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a key US non-profit whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimisation, has assessed Cyan’s digital triage tool and believes it has the potential to cut time, provide more focus to US law enforcement investigations and thus safeguard children.
Since their initial partnership was announced in August 2019, NCMEC has evaluated Cyan’s technology. It has found that Cyan’s computer forensics software tool, Cyan Examiner, “will work well to quickly and effectively identify child sexual abuse materials”.
Based on the analysis, NCMEC believes the tool will help to:
- Find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on devices more effectively
- Enhance law enforcement investigations into child sexual exploitation
- Reduce the time needed to point investigators in the right direction to safeguard children
NCMEC’s CyberTipline is the US centralised reporting system for child sexual exploitation. It receives reports of suspected child sexual exploitation from the public and electronic service providers, making the information available to law enforcement in the US and over 130 countries around the world. Last year alone it received 16.9 million reports which included 69 million images, videos and other files from electronic service providers related to child sexual exploitation. As such, NCMEC is one of the pivotal bodies in the global fight against child sexual exploitation.
“Timing is critical in any case involving the safety of a child and for law enforcement working on cases of child sexual exploitation, the volume of content and devices that must be reviewed can mean days or even weeks of work. So even in the most urgent cases, it can make it harder to identify where they should focus their efforts,” said John F. Clark, NCMEC president and CEO. “Cyan offers a solution to this problem. At NCMEC we have assessed Cyan’s triage tool, and we believe it will work well to quickly and effectively identify child sexual abuse materials. We believe this technology can cut the time needed to point investigators in the right direction to more directly safeguard children.”
Ian Stevenson, CEO and co-founder at Cyan commented: “We are delighted to have our product recognised by NCMEC as being able to provide a fast and effective solution to many of the issues faced by law enforcement when investigating online child sexual exploitation. NCMEC is one of the foremost bodies in the US fighting to prevent child sexual exploitation, and their impact and relationship with US law enforcement cannot be underestimated. This backing will help get our tool into the right hands with greater speed.
Stevenson continues, “Cyan is working towards a world where there is no place that harmful digital content can be easily hidden or shared, and a key step is aiding law enforcement in catching paedophiles and terrorists. We are passionate about providing the tools to enable faster and more effective triage to bring justice more quickly against these crimes.”
Cyan’s suite of rapid digital triage tools are already used in counter terror policing in the UK and Europe. Having integrated with the UK Home Office’s Child Abuse Image Database, its tools are deployed nationally for child sexual exploitation investigations and Cyan recently announced further partnerships with Susteen and MCM Solutions. This positive analysis of their tool supports Cyan’s continued growth and expansion into international markets.
For more information on the Cyan Examiner, visit https://www.cyanforensics.com/.
About Cyan
Cyan, founded in 2016, builds and sells new technologies that help law enforcement, social media and cloud companies find and block harmful content from paedophiles and terrorists.
Its digital forensics tools are the first of its kind and help police find evidence on computers in minutes, replacing processes that currently take many hours and backlogs that can last years, without sacrificing accuracy. This allows police to scan devices at a suspect’s location and make smarter decisions about what to seize, reducing risks by allowing faster decision making in the early stages of an investigation.
Its technology has been proven on-the-ground by top law enforcement agencies, including the Home Office, National Crime Agency and Counter Terror policing, and builds on research from Edinburgh Napier University.
Cyan has two arms to its business – Cyan Forensics focuses on aiding law enforcement whilst its sister brand, Cyan Protect, focuses on protecting social media users.
About NCMEC
Since 1984, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® has served as the leading private, non-profit organization helping to find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation and prevent future victimization. As part of its work as the clearing house and resource center on issues relating to missing and exploited children, NCMEC operates a hot-line, 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678), and has assisted in the recovery of more than 334,000 missing children. NCMEC also operates the CyberTipline®, a mechanism for reporting suspected child sexual exploitation, which has received more than 83 million reports since it was created in 1998. To learn more about NCMEC, visit www.missingkids.org or see NCMEC on Twitter, FacebookSource: RealWire