Dive Brief:

• IBM is piloting new Watson Financial Services technology to help financial institutions catch potential rogue traders, according to The Wall Street Journal.

• Watson Financial Services looks for patterns in chats and emails, analyzes trading data and flags incidents that might suggest insider trading or market manipulation activities. The tool is being piloted with a few financial-industry clients, Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM Industry Platforms, told The Wall Street Journal.

• IBM is also working to develop a Watson-based anti-money-laundering tool and a tool that would allow organizations to determine how effective their compliance programs are, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

A tool that can search through tons of data — automatically identifying patterns and suspicious activity — could be a boon to financial institutions, which are desperately trying to stay ahead of hackers and insider trading incidents.

But the technology could eventually find its way into enterprises in other sectors as well, where it could be used to mitigate insider threats. This is particularly in demand in a time where large information leaks are becoming more common, such as the release of the Panama Papers last year. 

Insiders — either current or former employees — can pose a big threat to an organization. A study published by Mimecast in August found 90% of IT security managers surveyed believe malicious insiders are a major threat to their organizations' security. The study also found 45% of respondents feel they are poorly prepared to defend against malicious insiders.