Study: Open-source intelligence assets growing in U.S., abroad

News

August 16, 2017

WASHINGTON. The market for Open Source Intelligence (referred to as OSINT) is being driven by investments in OSINT capabilities and state-of-the-art OSINT systems by national security, homeland security, public safety, and defense organizations as they increase their monitoring and research capabilities in open web, deep web, and darknet, according to a recent report by Homeland Security Research Corp. (HSRC), called "OSINT Market & Technologies 2017-2022."

The results of the market study revealed that rapid advances in big data, data analytics, text analytics, and artificial intelligence are facilitating the conversion of millions of scattered data points into manageable databases that intelligence analysts are then able to use. Moreover, the report found that an increasing amount of personal data, corporate content, and government databases that are now open and accessible to intelligence organizations around the world are leading to a rise in OSINT investments -- and by extension, OSINT, WEBINT (web intel), or SOCMINT (social-media intel) budgets.

The report predicted that while in 2016 the U.S. held 29 percent of the global market share to the Asia-Pacific region's 30 percent, the Asia-Pacific region market share would rise to 32 percent, to the U.S.'s 27 percent.

For more information on the HSRC report, please visit the website.