As the world continues to evolve and digitalize, there is unlimited data generated from people and business interactions in cyberspace. Merely exploring it in the right direction will open so many doors for the public and organizations to increase profits and perform much more efficiently in the new information age. Of all the intelligence disciplines, OSINT is the most commonly and widely used in public domain, corporates, national security and military intelligence.
Let’s first dig down to what is OSINT?
OSINT, which is open-source intelligence, refers to publicly available information, both online and offline resources to produce actionable intelligence without breaching any copyright or privacy laws.
Open source (OS) which by its term means information that is publicly available, mostly on the internet. But that also means that the information can be available on all publicly available sources.
The main catch is, the information is available for free regardless of whether it is found on a website, a blog page, a podcast, a long video format, tweets or social media pages for that matter. But you may wonder, is it always free? Well, no! There are times when the information in scientific papers, books are supposed to be purchased first for a tiny subscription.
Whether you are a cybersecurity expert, social media manager, a marketeer or just a keen person who wants to know about this, you are at the right place. So much of your data is accessible in today’s day and therefore you need to at least be aware about it.
Usage of open-source intelligence in Cybersecurity
It is surprising to discover that organizations constantly use OSINT all day long, but they do not consciously know about it.
It is so important to define your OSINT techniques and have clear goals for the same, especially if you are in a cybersecurity operation against a company/person/institution. It is important to identify and prevent threats in the future. Sales dept, product managers, digital marketers use OSINT to have a clear understanding of their field and deliver their services better.
While a mere internet search is enough to reveal so much about an organization, security teams are after them to look into their deep external layer to identify any external threat that might affect the organization’s functioning in some or the other way.
OSINT techniques
There are two main OSINT techniques, active and passive:
Active OSINT technique is the one where the researcher directly comes in contact with the target. This leads researchers to physically travel somewhere, coming in contact with someone or scanning a system for vulnerabilities. These results seem highly accurate in terms of information as you personally get to experience this but there is a high risk of getting caught because of the direct contact. Also, the scope is narrow because you cannot track the target for very long.
On the other hand, passive OSINT is the technique where you remotely track the data generated by the target by quiet observation, studying maps, and listening to someone’s conversation. Passive OSINT requires deeper analysis unlike active OSINT as all the data that is collected cannot be 100 percent relied on. But, OSINT majorly falls into the passive way of collecting data from the target because it is feasible just from the comfort of your chair.
Conclusion
With the widespread usage of internet communication worldwide, OSINT has become a critical enabler for both public and private intelligence.
OSINT is beneficial for different situations, including conducting a research, vulnerability assessment, threat analysis or just someone who bothered about how much of his personal information is leaked already, OSINT will give you the best tools to access that information without generally any hassle and mostly for free.
OSINT at your service:
Here are Samaya Consultants we offer various OSINT services to our clients. Mostly we are doing background checks and research. A lot of people are investing with scammers today and it could have been avoided with proper background checks.