Who needs open source intelligence?

Open source intelligence can be used by different actors with different motivations.

1. Business organization

Integrating open source intelligence mechanisms into corporate processes will bring enormous benefits and increase overall business efficiency in countering internal and external threats. We can recognize the following benefits:

Early data breach detection: Criminals sell or expose hacked data on the dark web after a successful breach. By using open source intelligence techniques, affected organizations can learn about data breaches early on and respond with the necessary protective measures to protect their confidential information and IT systems.

Protect brand and enhance business reputation: By monitoring social media platforms for brand mentions, companies can respond to customer complaints or negative reviews about a product/service or workplace and address it quietly and professionally before it becomes a public story. This effectively prevents the issue from escalating in the media and protects the company's brand name.

Vendor Risk Management: Businesses do not work in isolation, for example, most businesses use third-party contractors to provide additional services. Open source intelligence helps organizations identify potential vulnerabilities in third-party processes and work to counter it before it becomes a threat.

Detect enterprise data breaches: Open source intelligence is used to search the surface, deep and dark web for any leaked data. This enables businesses to investigate issues and determine the source of leaks.

Protecting Physical Facilities and Employees: For companies operating in troubled regions around the world, it is critical to have situational awareness of possible hazards that threaten the safety of their physical assets and even their employees. Open source intelligence can be used to research social media platforms, blogs, media sources, and even the dark web for indicators of possible threats.

All organization types can use open source intelligence to gain useful insights about future market trends or competitors, and to better understand public perception in a particular geographic area before launching a particular product or service. This reduces risk and helps organizations make more informed decisions.

2. Law firm

Lawyers and private investigators can ethically and legally utilize open source intelligence techniques (especially information found on social media platforms) in legal and litigation intelligence to gather evidence and research about any suspect or potential juror.

3. Law Enforcement Agencies and Security Services

Open source intelligence provides critical capabilities to law enforcement agencies and other security services to enhance their intelligence capabilities to fight crime and protect citizens, forces, communities, businesses and public services from organized crime, terrorism and a variety of cyber-related threats . Since most Internet users have at least one social media account, a great deal of personal information can be collected from social media platforms and Internet-based communications to gather intelligence about criminals, understand their ideology, and identify criminals before they commit crimes . Even enforcement protections are often established by analyzing open source intelligence information.

4. Black hat hackers and terrorist groups

Criminals and black hat hackers use open source intelligence tactics and techniques in the same way that good guys leverage gathering intelligence about a target before launching an attack. A social engineering attack starts after gathering enough information about the target. The information gathered is used to customize the attack to each individual, increasing the chances of a successful intrusion.