OSINT in the Classroom: Intelligence and OSINT Drive Informed Business Choices
We often talk about the importance of open source technology (OSINT) in business, but the demand for technology-driven insight needs to start well before executives hit the board room.
Students should be introduced to the power of OSINT in the classroom.
Our team shares a lifetime of experience in data-driven intelligence, and we’ve watched the importance of information grow, but that’s not to say we don’t see room for improvement in the future as well.
Leveraging Your Data
Spending years working in intelligence gives you the opportunity to see a lot of failure. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it prepares you for the future.
At first, we often watched people make decisions based on little or no information. You can imagine this didn’t lead to great results, but often managers were tied by limited time or resources — or both.
Now, we’re watching people make decisions with limited information when there are knowingly many more relevant pieces of information available. This is much, much worse. The limitations holding back companies today are not staff or time, but simply not knowing what information would be relevant or where to find it.
It’s a problem that starts in the classroom.
Students aren’t being introduced to the science behind information collection, filtering, analysis and product of insight.
It’s somehow expected that people will intuitively do such things, but in thousands of businesses across the world, people work with data every day and no one considers how to leverage that information.
Finding a Solution
This doesn’t mean those who aren’t leveraging open source information are lost, but now is the time to start adding OSINT to the traditional data your business already uses.
Let’s consider how this works for risk management professionals. Right now, those practitioners are using information such as internal audit reports, Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) data, internal financial data, and external regulatory requirements to stay in compliance.
It’s a long list of data, so it’s no wonder risk management professionals haven’t incorporated OSINT into the mix. At face value, it seems overwhelming to add yet another layer of information. But with the power of automation, OSINT can actually solve challenges these traditional formats could not, in a fraction of the time.
For example, a risk management professional who works for an insurance company might underwrite policies for medical professionals. When a medical practitioner applies for an insurance policy, it would be great to verify if they have ever had any malpractice or disciplinary issues in the states they’ve worked in previously.
That’s tricky because there’s no single repository for that information, but using OSINT solutions, BrightPlanet can build a search capable of issuing queries in the databases across all 50 states to check for any matching data.
A simple solution using open source harvesting to leverage data and answer specific challenges the business faces.
Making Educated Choices
BrightPlanet uses OSINT to monitor sources and provide automated analytics for clients across industries. We’re aware of the potential in OSINT and want others — from students to established professionals — to learn about the power of open sources so that businesses are making the most educated and insightful decisions possible.
To learn how we use OSINT to achieve greater insights, contact us for a demo. We enjoy teaching people what they can learn from open source data!
