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Monitoring Overview

  • Updated

Ongoing Monitoring is the process of continuously screening a set of entities against selected lists and generating alerts only when there are new or updated potential matches. This enables clients to stay informed about changes in risk status without the need for manual rescreening.

Key Terms:

  • Monitors: the lists of entities you are continuously screening
  • Notifiers: webhook configurations that determine where and how monitoring alerts are delivered
  • Screen Entities: the individuals or organizations being continuously monitored
  • Lists and list entries: the lists you have selected to screen against

How Ongoing Monitoring Works

Clients first need to designate what entities are being monitored, which lists they are being monitored against, and what their score threshold and other parameters are (e.g. enabling WeakAKAs). The process begins with an initial screen against your created monitor(s). After entities are screened against all of your designated lists once, Castellum.AI continuously checks for updates and only generates alerts for new or changed information.

Setup Process

  1. Execute initial screen of all entities against your designated lists using POST:/screen_entities
  2. Set up a notifier using POST:/monitoring/notifier
    • Prerequisite: You must have a webhook configured internally to receive alerts
    • Test your notifier configuration using POST:/monitoring/notifier/{slug}/test
    • A single notifier can be reused across multiple monitors to centralize alert handling
  3. Create a monitor referencing your notifier using POST:/monitoring/monitor
    • Each monitor links to one notifier and defines which lists to screen against
    • Set screening parameters such as score thresholds and WeakAKA settings
    • You can create multiple monitors with different parameters (e.g., "High-Risk Clients," "PEP Screening," "Sanctions Only")
    • Set the initial_screen boolean to true if entities added to a monitor should be screened to any hits already in the system (using the monitor settings), similar to POST :/screen_entity 
  4. Add entities to monitor using POST:/monitoring/monitor/{monitor_slug}/screen_entities
    • These are the specific names (people or companies) that will be continuously screened and generate alerts
    • Each entity requires a unique provider_id within the monitor
    • The same entity can be added to multiple monitors with different screening parameters for tiered monitoring
    • If initial_screen is set to true on the parent monitor, a screen of all available hits will be run using the monitor settings whenever a screen_entity  screen_entity is added or updated on a monitor

Monitoring Process

  1. Continuous monitoring: Castellum.AI continuously checks these entities against your designated lists
  2. Alert generation: When there's a relevant change or new information about an entity, Castellum.AI generates an immediate alert
  3. Alert delivery: Alerts are sent to your configured webhook in batches for convenient workflowing
    • If delivery fails, Castellum.AI will retry sending to the webhook every hour for 24 hours
    • A single notification can contain multiple hits for different entities

Note: 

  • Ongoing Monitoring is available via the API and can be integrated into banking core, case management or other systems used for AML/KYC workflows. Monitoring is not available via the platform.
  • Reach out to support@castellum.ai or your dedicated customer success manager regarding how the initial screening impacts your usage and billing. 
  • For detailed information about monitoring concepts, relationships, and data structures, please refer to the Core Monitoring Concepts article.

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