The vital role of OsInt in COVID-19

For decades it has been widely accepted that Open Source Intelligence is a key element of the overall Intelligence chain. Augmented by Human Intelligence and Signals Intelligence, OsInt completes the picture to provide real-time actionable intelligence.

While OsInt has widely been acknowledged and used in Europe and America, it's adoption on the African continent has been lethargic at best. Commercial entities have in the past five years advanced their internal capacity, using OsInt for tracings, commercial investigation and due diligence.

Across the Continent, Law Enforcement and Military application of OsInt has largely been seen to be slow and in some cases non-existent. Many African Law Enforcement agencies have a few people manning a desk with limited abilities into social media monitoring and active data collection. Even fewer are actively mobilising the capacity to predict trends and patterns during disaster management.

Covid-19 has in many cases pushed the boundaries of skill within OsInt. The need to identify the source of fake-news video clips, to understand the viral spread of news and where necessary correct it with accurate commentary. While there are of course automated systems capable of widespread Social Media and online monitoring, these are exceedingly expensive in the African context (currency) and still require skilled Analysts to guide the direction and interpretation of queries.

One can only hope the that the broad and extensive requirements of online intelligence that COVID-19 has highlighted will bring to the fore the need for real-time OsInt capacities that can be portable, deployed at short notice and cover a broad range of skills including video and image enhancement/ analysis as well as deep-diving to identify suspects and potential agitators amidst a national crisis.

When one considers the low cost of training and implementing dedicated OsInt units, the results are patently obvious. This is where the best bang-for-buck intelligence and force multiplier is to be found. One can hope that the LE and Military communities across Africa will reflect on the situation as it has unfolded and take forward learning outcomes that will enable them to grow and nurture these capacities to the benefit of the next crisis that unfolds.

Within the Private Sector, we've seen a huge surge in demand from corporate clientele in brand protection, online presence monitoring and of course suspect identification and tracking. These have become essential services to the corporate market. Our field desk has been deployed daily on a variety of taskings to ensure that the full set of available data around incidents is mined for maximum effect. Pro-Active tracking has facilitated the feed of information to role players around areas of concern in terms of statistical accuracy, progress during the lockdown phase and of course suspect tracing as required.

Make no mistake, these are exciting times for the "Digital Detective" and we anticipate enormous growth in this market segment (LE and commercial) beyond the COVID Crisis.