Most of the information a business needs to make a good decision has already been published somewhere. The challenge is finding it, knowing which parts are reliable, and connecting the pieces. That is exactly what OSINT does.
What is OSINT
OSINT, short for Open Source Intelligence, is intelligence built from open sources: information that was published legally and that anyone can reach, if they know where to look. The term comes from the national-security intelligence world, where it has been known for decades that a large part of the picture lies in open information.
In business, the same methods are used to answer questions such as: who is behind a company, who it is connected to, where a competitor is heading, and whether there is anything you should know before signing a deal.
Where the information comes from
An open source is any source that was lawfully published. In practice, good research combines several types of sources:
- Open media: newspapers, radio and TV broadcasts.
- Social networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.
- Websites of companies, organizations and people.
- Public information: government and authority publications, statistical reports, published minutes and speeches.
- Academic and legal information: research, case law and legal databases.
- Paid databases and AI tools for finding and sorting information.
A single piece of information rarely says much on its own. The value comes from cross-checking: an address that appears in two documents, a name that shows up in both a committee protocol and a LinkedIn profile, or a date that doesn’t fit the official story.
From information to intelligence: four steps
Information is raw material. Intelligence is an answer. The path between them runs through four steps:
- Defining the research question. What exactly you need to know, and for which decision.
- Collection, sorting, analysis and processing. Gathering from every relevant source, filtering out the noise and cross-checking the findings.
- The deliverable: business intelligence, an intelligence picture or an answer to the question, with conclusions and recommendations.
- Use: the client makes the decision.
Examples of business questions
These are the kinds of questions OSINT can answer, taken from research projects Modi-In has carried out:
- Did the committee that decided a tender have a conflict of interest with the winning company?
- Did a company that went bankrupt turn into a new company, to hide assets from its creditors?
- Is there negative information on the shareholders of a startup, before investing?
- Where, anywhere in the world, are the heirs of a landowner?
What OSINT is not
OSINT is not hacking, not espionage and not the use of stolen data. Professional research follows the law and ethical standards, in Israel and in every country where the subjects of the research are located.
At Modi-In I never use stolen or illegal data files, never break into websites, and, by a deliberate decision, do not mine the dark web. This is how I work.
