Powered by Machine Learning and Built on Principles from the U.S. Secret Service, FIRSTSight™ Seeks to Identify Threats and Behaviors of Concern and Stop Them Before They Turn into Violent Acts

Rekor Systems announced the public availability of FIRSTSight^™, its innovative predictive intelligence analysis solution for early warning threat detection and identification within schools. FIRSTSight^™ was used to monitor hundreds of schools in Florida, Montana and Michigan during the 2018-2019 school year and is available for just $3 per student per year.

FIRSTSight^™ is more than just a monitoring solution. It incorporates 24/7 social media security monitoring powered by machine learning and a team of analysts backed by threat identification and prevention principles from the U.S. Secret Service.

FIRSTSight^™ includes the use of location-specific (geo-fence) monitoring around each school location, which increases our ability to identify concerning posts within each school’s environment. Through advanced, artificial intelligence (AI) technology, open-source, public social media data is scraped using contextual analysis of key words such as “gun” or “shoot” or “hate” to identify potential threats and behaviors of concern.

When a key word or phrase is identified by the system, an alert is sent to our experienced intelligence analysts to evaluate the post and address the potential concern or threat with school staff, as needed. Another key benefit of FIRSTSight^™ is the ability for schools to contact our intelligence analysts directly for targeted monitoring related to a subject of concern or a specific event for which monitoring might produce useful intelligence.

“Often after a violent act in a school, we ask ourselves ‘How could we have prevented this? How could we have known?’ The fact is, many times there are public warnings, like social media posts, that if found and reported, might have prevented a tragedy. That’s why we are pleased to launch FIRSTSight^™ – to help identify these threats and behaviors of concern before they turn into violence,” said Riaz Latifullah, Executive Vice President, Rekor Systems.

“Our solution is robust and secure, and based on protocols used by the foremost experts in threat identification and prevention in the world – the U.S. Secret Service. And at $3 per student per year – less than the cost of a notebook – it’s incredibly affordable and scalable as student populations grow or decrease.”

There have been more than 460 incidents of gunfire on school grounds since 2013, including 181 deaths. While much of the discussion focuses on gun control, schools continue to focus on hardening their environments by implementing metal detectors and armed security to handle a threat once it arrives in a school. Our FIRSTSight^™ solution focuses instead on assessment of potential threats and behaviors of concern, with the goal of identifying and stopping the threat or addressing the behavior of concern, before it ever escalates to violence on school grounds.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are more than 45 million K-12 public school students and three million K-12 private school students in the United States.