2. The OSINT Challenge
Introducing OpenMIND
Open source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence derived from publicly available data sources such as the media,
government, professional and academic sources, geospatial data and of course the Internet. OSINT today is commonly
used as a critical information source by intelligence and law enforcement organizations.
The Internet provides an endless source of diverse data—from factual information such as flight schedules and
government websites to personal information uploaded by users in social networks, blogs, forums and talkbacks. In
fact, some crucial information about entities, connections between entities and the public’s state of mind can only be
found online.
Moreover, enabled by social media, the Internet has become an arena in which criminal activity is conducted around the
clock. Terrorists, pedophiles, human traffickers and other offenders use the Internet for their illegal activities.
Unfortunately, gathering intelligence from the Internet is a difficult task. The Internet’s exponentially expanding volumes
of information make it difficult to find relevant information; data is frequently scattered across multiple locations, formats
and languages; and because information is constantly updated, it is difficult to keep track of changes.
Using search engines to collect OSINT presents several challenges. For one, search engines return long lists of results.
Secondly, most Deep Web data—data that requires user actions such as subscribing to a site or generating a query—
cannot be reached by search engines. Moreover, there is the risk of exposing a search term or the analyst’s identity, which
can cause a security breach.
Because of these and other challenges, it is extremely difficult and tedious to collect and process data. However, OSINT
can find unique information, adding tremendous value to online investigation and research efforts.
OpenMIND™, 3i-MIND’s innovative OSINT solution, was developed specifically for intelligence and law enforcement
agencies. It enables agencies to not only collect data efficiently, effectively and legally, but to automatically process and
analyze that data, thereby ensuring its relevance and importance. OpenMIND automatically finds suspicious patterns and
behaviors and reduces ongoing dependency on expert analysts in order to achieve high-quality results.
3i-MIND’s OpenMIND provides end-to-end open source intelligence collection, analysis and management. It enables
intelligence organizations to collect, process and analyze open source data easily, quickly and effectively.
3. OpenMIND is easy to use and offers a wide set of automated capabilities that helps analysts tackle ongoing research
and investigations and generate new leads. The platform’s powerful, comprehensive search and gather capabilities
along with its robust security measures maintain the complete security of organizational content and anonymity of
searches and queries.
OpenMIND helps analysts to find insights they were not even looking for, about entities they had not previously queried.
It also helps to pinpoint specific websites not regularly monitored that may be relevant to research being performed. Thus,
even analysts who are not OSINT experts can use OpenMIND to generate valuable intelligence.
Reach Relevant Information - Targeted Acquisition
OpenMIND broadens analysts’ access to information. By removing obstacles such as the Deep Web and language barriers
and through use of strong collection capabilities, OpenMIND helps analysts to reach relevant information that is otherwise
inaccessible. Additionally, OpenMIND filters out irrelevant information to reduce noise and help analysts focus on
important information.
Social Media Support
Social media, including social networks, forums, blogs and chat rooms, is a valuable source for locating unique intelligence
not found elsewhere. OpenMIND lawfully collects, processes and presents data from social media, surfacing valuable
insights and generating relevant reports.
Reduce Noise - Semantic Analysis
Internet data in the form of text is unstructured and difficult to analyze. OpenMIND offers a powerful semantic processing
engine that analyzes text according to its semantic meaning and context. This semantic engine supports a wide set of
capabilities, including extraction of relations between entities, disambiguation (to distinguish, for example, between C4
the explosive and C4 the car), semantic searches (e.g., search for “Apache” or “Blackhawk” instead of “helicopter”) and
others that enable the system to “understand” text and find relevant information within data.
Surface Insights - Analysis Tools
OpenMIND offers a set of powerful analysis tools, including visual link analysis, text analysis, timelines, statistics, alerts and
reports. Users can define suspect profiles such that matches will automatically surface. OpenMIND turns collected data
into intelligence.
Efficient and Effective Work - Specialized OSINT Methodology
All OpenMIND system workflows were designed to support efficient and effective OSINT collection and analysis. Source
management, priority intelligence requirement (PIR) management, rule-based alerts, statistics, etc. are all useful tools
that are available to guide analysts in their daily work. Workflows are also flexible to ensure that OpenMIND supports an
organization’s existing workflows and regulations.
Find the “Unknown Unknown”
OpenMIND proactively finds insights, even if a user has no clues or leads about their topic. The system automatically
performs legal searches for forums, websites, social networks, etc. associated with a researched topic. It then identifies
active site users, generates alerts and finds patterns and abnormalities to reach keen insights.
Detection of Trends and Abnormalities in Websites
OpenMIND monitors website activities to find patterns and OpenMIND users can choose to be alerted to changes in those
patterns when statistical analysis of regularly monitored websites is employed. Forum leaders can be identified; blog posts
extracted; peaks recognized; and traffic spikes detected. A user can be notified of any suspicious activity.
The OpenMIND Difference
