Shutdowns and Slow-Downs: Detecting Anomalies in Granular Internet Activity Data, at Global Scale

SSA Vic is pleased to have A/Prof Simon Angus talk to us about the internet activity data and what the analysis reveals about human activity. We hope you join us!

Despite free access to the internet being recognised by the UN as a human right since 2016, and more than half of humanity now being online, in many locations, digital freedoms are routinely interrupted by electricity outages, network failures, congestion, and sovereign interference. But can these interruptions be detected and documented. How wide-spread are they? Are some countries or peoples more impacted than others? Founded in 2017, the Monash IP Observatory has been measuring the availability and quality of experience of 400 million internet-connected end-points in around 20,000 localities across the globe, 3 billion times a day. Anomaly detection has been a feature of the observatory since its inception, with methods constantly in development and deployment alike. Here, we give an overview of the observatory, its data stream, and the challenges that face statistical anomaly detection in this context. We provide examples from Venezuela, Myanmar, and sub-Saharan Africa, and draw on experiences providing insights for several national and multi-national organisations.

Associate Professor Simon Angus is a co-founder and director of the Monash IP Observatory, housed at SoDa Laboratories, Monash Business School where he is a member of the Department of Economics. Simon brings a decade’s worth of experience across computational and complexity science, with a particular emphasis on applying modern tools to new problem domains in the social, biological, and physical sciences.

There is also a chance to enter a draw to win the SSA T-Shirt (http://bit.ly/ssa-tshirt) for one lucky Victoria or Tasmania resident!

If you have any questions please contact lidijat@gmail.com.