Open Source Intelligence: How are corporate houses getting affected?

The Internet has become an indispensable necessity and hosts a sea of information from every nook and corner of the world. The world of the web has moved beyond a space for mere sharing of information to a space that is now processing information into intelligence. Organizations today are keen on culling this data and deriving analytical intelligence to fuel their strategies and streamline their profits.

Open Source Intelligence, in simpler words, refers to information collected from all sources available on the web. With increasing online presence of individuals, monitoring their digital activities has become imperative for organizations. The seekers of OSINT range from Law-Enforcement and Government agencies to Business tycoons and corporate houses.

Components of OSINT

• Social Media
  The popularity of social media can be gauged from the self-explanatory understanding of the term ‘social media’. While providing immense opportunities, social media has also spawned a new era of cyber terrorism. Notching a level up, social media is a platform increasingly used by anti-social elements to disseminate their propaganda, commit cyber-crime in ways unimaginable. From Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to Instagram, Blogger, Google+, Tumblr, WordPress, and Dailymotion.
• Open Sources
  Open sources like news feeds, blogs, and articles play a paramount role in defining the sentiments of the masses, while simultaneously forming an opinion and taking a stand on issues of critical importance.
• Deep Web
  Deep web, as opposed to Surface web, is the hidden part of the internet whose contents are not indexed by standard web search engines for any reason. The content of the deep internet will be settled and accessed by a direct URL or IP address and will need a word or different cybersecurity access past the general public web site page.
• Dark Net
  Darknet or the darker parts of the deep web is an overlay network that can be accessed only with specific software, configurations, or authorization, often using non-standard communication protocols and ports. Dark webs are friend-to-friend networks (usually used for file sharing with a peer-to-peer connection) and private networks such as Tor.

Corporate Houses and OSINT:

Giant corporate houses are nowadays seeking solutions from Open Source Intelligence to notch up their planning and business strategies. In a competitive business world that likes to retain its edges, Business OSINT is imparting crucial analytics and reports to corporates, enabling them to enhance their output and ensure the satisfaction of their customers.

In the world of the Internet, if an organization understands the chatter around its products and actively monitors and incorporates the pros and cons of the chat bubble, this is precisely the most enhanced and efficient way to carry forward a segue from the mere collection of reviews to the processing of data into actionable intelligence

Corporate houses seek OSINT primarily for:

1. Company Branding and monitoring – The social media conversations are collected, monitored and analyzed to understand the sentiments of the public for a particular brand. Company branding exercises have undergone metamorphic transformations with the advances in AI and its ability to weave the thread from public sentiments.
2. Customer Reviews – Customer Reviews and Customer Satisfaction play a crucial role in the popularity of the organization. Business houses are heavily investing in customer satisfaction, lest the power of the internet holds within it immense capabilities to spread negative comments like a wildfire. OSINT enables you to collect and analyze large volumes of reviews and carefully produce as output intelligent information capable of complementing strategies that enhance customer satisfaction.
3. Campaign Evaluation – Campaigns or drives are nowadays indispensable to any marketing plan. Organizations meticulously carve out campaigns to garner interest, spread awareness and attract the likeliness of the public. OSINT enables you to monitor the success rates of your campaigns. OSINT’s quick output from unmanageable volumes of online data has attracted corporate giants to actively seek OSINT tools and prepare a report card of the campaigns.
4. Competitor/Competition Analysis – Competition analysis in simple words enables you to understand where the market is moving in terms of your competitors. OSINT helps you streamline your analysis of the market, complements your understanding of trends and sentiments along with a comprehensive mastery of competitive products.

The world of the internet will continue to expand and disseminate humongous volumes of data. OSINT is an emerging favorite amongst corporates to understand what is being talked about. While OSINT comes with its own limitations, the need of the hour is to constructively tread on this path and benefit your business from it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made During an OSINT(Open-Source Intelligence) Investigation?
Answer:
1. Not having a plan/process
2.Not documenting accurately enough
3. Not taking precautions to protect yourself and your system
4.Not corroborating data
5. Not cleaning your system after the assessment

Question: What is OSINT and How Can Your Organization Use it?
Answer: OSINT stands for “Open-Source INTelligence”, which refers to any unclassified information and includes anything freely available on the web. Open-Source Intelligence(OSINT) is the opposite of close-source intelligence or classified information. Common Open-Source INTelligence sources include social networks, forums, business websites, blogs, videos, and news sources.

Question: What is the difference Between OSINT(Open Source Intelligence) vs. Big Data from the Deep Web?
Answer: Big Data from the Deep Web is OSINT. Whatever you want to call it – online Big Data, Open-Source INTelligence(OSINT), or open-source intelligence – your organization can benefit from exploiting that information. There is information publicly available online right now that you are missing by searching with Google, or not searching for at all because you aren’t even aware it exists.

Question: What is Second-Generation Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and the OSINT Cycle?
Answer:
1.OSINT has been revolutionized over the past two decades.
2.OSINT(Open Source Intelligence) is often underutilized by the Intelligence Community because of the difficulty in understanding emerging OSINT sources and methods, particularly social media platforms.
3. A more robust definition of OSINT is needed, as open source data can come in many forms.