Cloudera Broadens its Collaboration with Thorn to Include Software and Services to Fight Child Sexual Exploitation

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 28, 2016 -- Cloudera, the global provider of the fastest, easiest, and most secure data management and analytics platform built on Apache Hadoop and the latest open source technologies, today announced it has extended its collaboration with Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children (www.wearethorn.org), to include professional services and support in addition to a Cloudera-powered enterprise data hub. Thorn is a non-profit organization dedicated to driving technology innovation to fight child sexual exploitation. The Thorn Tech Task Force is comprised of more than twenty technology companies, which includes Cloudera, lending their knowledge, time and resources to help accelerate victim identification, disrupt platforms that facilitate abusive behavior and to deter predators.

Cloudera Enterprise which currently serves as the underlying architecture for Thorn’s cloud-based collection and data analysis tool called Spotlight, provides both distributed processing to run natural language processing and analytic algorithms on HDFS data. Last September Cloudera honored Spotlight during its annual Data Impact Awards. To date, Spotlight is in the hands of more than 3,000 U.S. law enforcement officers at 780 agencies across all 50 states. The platform has been used in over 8,305 trafficking investigations, assisted in identifying 2,025 child sex trafficking victims and more than 4,624 adult victims, and has helped bring more than 2,249 traffickers to justice. Thorn will soon introduce Spotlight in Canada.

"Thorn is doing critically important work to stop child sex trafficking and bring to light crimes against children," said Mike Olson, chief strategy officer at Cloudera. "To further support the organization’s efforts, Cloudera has committed to providing our industry leading data platform for free as well as the expertise to utilize the platform to further improve Thorn’s ability to fight for exploited children and adults alike. We have long believed in the power and the promise of data to address important problems in society. Working with Thorn is one way for Cloudera to make that promise real.”

“Advances in technology have introduced a whole new dimension to crimes against children. Cloudera has provided expertise in both architecture and the security infrastructure required to support Thorn's efforts to combat growing abuse and pervasive exploitation,” said Julie Cordua, chief executive officer of Thorn. “Their continued support of both software and services will help us arm law enforcement and industry on the front lines with the information required to identify the perpetrators of these crimes and stop child abuse.”

About Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children

Thorn drives technology innovation to fight child sexual exploitation. Thorn partners with non-profits and academic institutions to gather new insights into the role technology plays in child sex trafficking, the creation and proliferation of child pornography, and the normalization of child sexual exploitation. Thorn then goes beyond insight to action to develop the tools, systems and approaches to help address these issues. Thorn has also created a Technology Task Force — a group of more than 25 technology companies that collaborate on technology initiatives to fight child sexual exploitation. Participating companies include Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Microsoft, Cloudera, SV Angel, Twitter, Expedia, Connotate, Irdeto, Mozilla, Digital Reasoning, Palantir, Sabre, Pinterest, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others. For more information on Thorn, please visit www.wearethorn.org, follow us on Twitter @THORN and facebook.com/wearethorn.  

About Cloudera

Cloudera delivers the modern data management and analytics platform built on Apache Hadoop and the latest open source technologies. The world’s leading organizations trust Cloudera to help solve their most challenging business problems with Cloudera Enterprise, the fastest, easiest and most secure data platform available for the modern world. Our customers efficiently capture, store, process and analyze vast amounts of data, empowering them to use advanced analytics to drive business decisions quickly, flexibly and at lower cost than has been possible before. To ensure our customers are successful, we offer comprehensive support, training and professional services. Learn more at http://cloudera.com.

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Deborah Wiltshire
Cloudera
[email protected]
+1 (650) 644-3900