Open-source intelligence has many features comparable to or exact replicas of conventional all-source intelligence approaches used in the intelligence cycle.
It’s not unusual to want to combine certain parts of physical and cyber security, especially in mature organizations that are proactively enhancing their security capabilities. Businesses have begun to create fusion centers that mix disciplines because many physical security-related components are now online. By doing this, companies can scale security to safeguard sites and thousands of people, close coverage gaps, and integrate cyber and physical security. The open-source intelligence that can improve many facets of a physical security program is the key to this confluence.
Broadening the Definition of Open Source Intelligence
Open-source intelligence has many features comparable to or exact replicas of conventional all-source intelligence approaches used in the intelligence cycle. Traditional open-source and non-traditional open-source intelligence are the basic dataset categories to map. Conventional open source intelligence datasets include the quantitative and qualitative gathering and analysis of non-classified, open-source sources that provide contexts, such as archives, company records, dating sites, and the dark web. The human, signal, and imagery intelligence equivalents in open source intelligence are non-traditional datasets. They can be based on anything from threat actor activity on social media to external telemetry to social media images used to determine locations.
Identifying a Cyber Threat Intelligence Program’s Key Capabilities
Before digging into how cyber threat intelligence benefits a physical security program, here is a list of some of the services, products, and analyses that a CTI program might address. The following services and physical security programs overlap significantly:
- Analysis of adversary infrastructure
- Attribution research
- Dark Web surveillance
- Internal threat assessment
- Threat analysis for locating and correlating hostile actors with outside datasets
- Intelligence report production
- Information exchange (external to the organization)
- Monitoring the capabilities and intentions of threat actors
Physical security is often not affected by other CTI services, which are still the responsibility of cyber security teams. These services include indication analysis, vulnerability research, malware analysis, and reverse engineering (enrichment, pivoting, and correlating to historical reporting).
Also Read: Strategies to Embrace Industry-Grade Cyber Security
Defining CTI and Physical Security Programs Overlap
Physical security practitioners are increasingly receiving crucial information from security teams thanks to the use of open source intelligence and cyber threat intelligence. The following disciplines often make up the physical and corporate security programs of these teams, with use cases at the heart of the convergence of cyber and physical security disciplines:
Physical Asset Protection and Executive Protection
- OSINT and dark web monitoring to spot false social media profiles that target or misrepresent CEOs, employees, protests, and planned attacks on tangible assets.
- Monitoring the purposes and abilities of threat actors that try to harm a company’s reputation
- Identifying spearphishing targeting executives, intellectual property, facilities, or personnel using adversary infrastructure and attribution analysis.
- Sharing intelligence with government or commercial partners to thwart threats and threat actors
- Watching open or private source forums to spot internal and external danger actors- cooperating
- Heat maps help pinpoint crime rates and potential dangers in current or future overseas places
- OSINT and social media geolocation monitoring to spot disturbance, unfavorable attitudes, or hostilities that can cause travel plans to be delayed or disrupted
- Monitoring employee travel habits that could endanger executives or facilities
- The sharing of intelligence with government or commercial partners in cases where an executive or worker needs to be removed because they are in danger
- Environmental and Regulatory Risk Particular to Business
Physical and information security disciplines have much in common, becoming increasingly apparent. Open-source intelligence, however, is not only a crucial enabler in today’s risk management landscape but also a crucial decision and collaboration tool for business unit stakeholders when appropriately used.
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