Secure OSINT: Authentic8 and Fivecast integration

Authentic8 and Fivecast have brought together their powerhouse solutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of highly sensitive OSINT investigations.

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is increasingly recognized as a key piece of the intelligence puzzle by both government agencies and private organizations. Most recently, the U.S. Army announced that OSINT is an important “intelligence discipline of first resort,” referring to its ability to tip and cue other intelligence disciplines as being critical to their future success.

Learn how Authentic8 and Fivecast are joining forces to secure online investigations for government agencies >

With society increasingly living our lives online, the amount of data generated grows exponentially every day, hour and minute. However, while open-source data is all around us — across the surface, deep and dark web — gaining secure access to this data for effective analysis to produce actionable intelligence is not as straightforward as its abundance may indicate. That’s the immense value behind the Fivecast and Authentic8 partnership — delivering the combined power of broad open-source data collection and analytics with a secure, isolated and obfuscated platform for web access that removes the risk inherent in conducting OSINT investigations. 

Driving OSINT security and efficiency

Automating the collection, filtering and analysis of open-source data can be a game changer for intelligence teams, helping them find that risky needle in the haystack much faster to progress their missions and protect communities and organizations. That’s where Fivecast ONYX comes in, a market-leading OSINT solution that deploys unique and proprietary data collection capability across many data sources including mainstream and niche social media platforms, news sites, people and company search engines, as well as access to over 200K unique sites and hundreds of millions of records on the dark web.

There are inherent risks for analysts and intelligence teams in accessing data and conducting OSINT investigations — both risks to the individual and, more broadly, risk to the investigation from both cyber and physical attacks if anonymity is exposed.  Open-source data is available for collection in near real-time which, combined with the need to stay constantly ahead of threat actors drives the need for speedy and efficient analysis. The reality is that many intelligence teams face resource constraints from squeezed budgets and are being asked to do more with less, leading to the task of filtering all that data while also managing security and anonymity becoming overwhelming in many situations.  

Analysts need to be freed up from security or anonymity concerns so that they can focus on putting their tradecraft to work with deep analysis work. That’s the driving force behind why we have partnered with Authentic8 to integrate Fivecast ONYX with Authentic8, the creators of Silo for Research, a fully isolated, anonymous and secure platform for conducting all forms of digital investigations. With threats increasing across geo-political, criminal and corporate spectrums at the same time as resources and budgets for intelligence teams become more constrained, Fivecast and Authentic8 have a common objective to help analysts do more with less and enable them to use technology as a force multiplier to achieve mission success.  

The integration enables time savings and efficiencies for analysts who can deploy the Silo for Research platform seamlessly from within Fivecast ONYX, streamlining current manual methods of obfuscation and providing an optimized workflow for OSINT investigations.

Request a demo to see the Fivecast-Authentic8 integration in action >

Silo for Research complements the existing Fivecast security and privacy features which support our customers in meeting their compliance requirements and operating procedures. These include proportionate, user-driven collection, enabling customers to accurately target data that is of direct relevance to their missions, without drawing in masses of unrelated “noise” often associated with a “dragnet” approach. Additionally, Fivecast solutions are cloud-based (SaaS), hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) with data and network segregation between servers and the core architecture has been designed to meet the stringent security requirements of government agencies. In addition, a fully automated audit trail can be stored within the system and stringent user access controls are available to limit access to authorized users who have the appropriate security clearances in place. 

From counter-terrorism and foreign influence investigations to tracking fraud across the web and conducting KYC & AML due diligence or vetting programs, there are a broad range of use cases that can benefit from the combined power of secure, anonymized and obfuscated open-source data collection and deep analysis that are all contributing to a safer world. 

Going to DODIIS? Sign up for a demo of the integration at the Fivecast booth >