SEBI Looks to Increase Surveillance of Social Media With Web Intelligence Tool

SEBI, or the Securities and Exchange Board of India, is looking to increase the surveillance of social media platforms through a Web intelligence tool, to examine violations of various securities laws. The capital market regulator is working towards a Web intelligence tool that relies on an artificial intelligence-based solution to extract and analyse unstructured publicly available data to gain deep intelligence insights about various entities, individuals, groups and topics. It has also issued a public notice inviting bids from solution providers to implement the tool. The Web intelligence tool is expected to save time and improve efficiency in the overall investigation process, according to the regulator.

The securities and commodity market regulator has invited an Expression of Interest (EOI) from bidders to implement, install and maintain a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Web Intelligence Tool to monitor violations of securities laws by individuals, groups and other entities. As mentioned, the Web intelligence tool is required to use artificial intelligence and data analytics to supervise social media and other platforms.

A surge in Internet usage resulted in the production of immense amounts of unstructured publicly available data on the Web, said SEBI, adding that this unstructured data has the potential to provide deep investigation insights about various entities, individuals, groups and topics related to violations of various securities laws.

Manual extraction and analysis of unstructured publicly available data can be time consuming, and the public notice issued by the market regulator states that the new Web intelligence tool is expected to save time and improve efficiency in the overall investigation process. The tool should be able to collect unstructured publicly available data from the Web, including public websites, social media platforms, and open-source databases among others. It should enable investigators to analyse the data using its AI and data analytics capabilities, SEBI’s document states.

The Web intelligence tool is required to have the capability to visualise the data in the form of a network chart to find insights about connections among relevant entities, individuals and groups. Further, the tool should generate ready-made reports based on the defined report templates, and the users must be able to create and modify report templates without requiring any code. October 3 is the last date for submission of EOI, according to the regulator.