A modern security professional’s job is becoming more and more complex. It’s no surprise considering the influx of unexpected places where threats are beginning to surface. In order to gain the upper hand, your security strategy must include a diverse means of gathering intelligence, both for a predictive and reactive approach. In an era where content is being created at an exponential rate – 90% of the world’s data was created in the last 2 years alone – the future of security must be intelligence-led.
A major source of intelligence that cannot be overlooked is the vast amount of publicly available information (PAI) being produced by consumers, hackers, newsmakers, and bloggers every single day. Globally, almost every person and organization is communicating across multiple platforms and networks, as well as handling personal and corporate needs virtually – such as shopping, travel planning, and data management. Finding like-minded communities and audiences online is the goal. However, wherever you have people congregating, especially if there is potential for monetary gain, the risk of nefarious behavior rises. This has created an increased need for open-source intelligence (OSINT) and OSINT platforms.
The purpose of seeking information from public data varies on the type of insights you wish to gather. Many industries and professionals look to open sources to uncover workplace security threats, protect executives, prevent loss, manage assets, gauge brand sentiment, and monitor conversations for creating marketing strategies. Intelligence professionals use certain types of OSINT and OSINT platforms for investigations, prosecution, evidence gathering, and events monitoring.
