Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is probably not a phrase that you use in your everyday vocabulary. However, it is something that can be garnered in your everyday life. It is everywhere, from the information publicly available on radio, television, and even newspapers. It also includes information distributed in any database from commercial, to mail networks and portable electronic media like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Open Source Intelligence includes many different sources and can be beneficial in many ways.
The advantages of OSINT are far reaching. Probably the most appealing benefit is that it is one of the most inexpensive information sources around. For companies with a limited intelligence budget, this is ideal as it has the potential to save them a lot of expenses by cutting down on classified sources. As an added bonus, this can also improve other business facets as the money could be better used elsewhere.
Along with the cost, Open Source Intelligence is extremely portable. The sheer accessibility of this method is impressive in comparison to the traditional information collecting sources. Theoretically, these sources can be accessed anywhere at any time, legally and with total ease. If you can access twitter, you can access the entire wealth of open source intelligence.
The business world has a lot of use for Open Source Intelligence. Modern software is often being employed by today’s most successful businesses in order to determine a lot of important data that is vital to a functioning business or company. Needless to say, corporations need effective OSINT software in order to succeed on a large or small scale. Businesses are adopting OSINT for a lot of reasons. The following are some examples:
Risk Management
How a person or company is viewed publicly and privately is something that every company takes into account before working with them. This is where the idea of Open Source Intelligence comes in. It makes it easy for a company to view the profile of any potential employee or products. This can be a lifesaver when it comes to creating an untarnished legal and ethical company persona. The access to this information also makes it easy to continuously monitor these things even after people have been employed.
Protection
Companies must always be on the lookout for potentially negative trends. They must be able to act as quickly as possible to these things and with OSINT techniques, they are able to cost-effectively process large quantities of data from multiple sources to detect any sort of bad press, stigma, or market trends. This is extremely helpful to the modern company. Especially when the scale of that company is particularly large.
Customer Satisfaction
We all know that the customer is always right. That is why Open Source Intelligence is an incredible tool to gaining and leveraging customer feedback. This can help the company be in better touch with its audience. This also helps to predict a trend in the marketplace. Having a wealth of sources is good in order to create a greater context for the analysis of data.
Open Source Intelligence is a symptom of the current world we live in. It is far-reaching and accessible to almost anyone in the free world. It can provide a lot of aid to businesses, but also individuals involved in the legal sector. It is oftentimes the most effective when used alongside traditional intelligence sources that are often classified. However, it is still a necessary and promising part of intelligence and has a real use for gathering and analyzing real data from real sources.
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