IntelEdge @ Big Data & AI Conference: Business Case for OSINT

Several members of the IntelEdge team had the pleasure of attending the Big Data and AI conference in Toronto last week. With a purported 6000 attendees over two days, it was a tremendous opportunity to get to feel what’s going on in the industry, as well as introduce ourselves and our offering to an aligned audience.

Notably, on top of all the great networking opportunities, we were able to discuss IntelEdge as presenters on stage in front of a (small but then quite large) crowd.

Our presentation was about how Intel Edge helped the reputation management firm Tactix address a business problem. Tactics represented a chemical company that was facing opposition from an activist group spreading misinformation. IntelEdge used AI and deep web scraping to gather intelligence on the activist group, including biographies of key people, funding sources, and was able to analyze a website that had been taken down for additional information. This intelligence helped Tactix understand the group's strategies and provided early warnings of future actions. The client was able to address criticisms and the opposition more effectively as a result of the insights provided by IntelEdge.

How did we help Tactix specifically? IntelEdge used several of our special techniques:

- Keyword signatures that can handle up to 10,000 keywords/phrases to search large datasets, unlike traditional search engines which are limited to 32 keywords. This allowed us to create complex filters in order to really drill down and narrow the specific fields of interest.

- Chatter analysis to structure and cluster unstructured social media conversations to identify indicators and warnings using natural language processing (NLP).

- Image matching and recognition using AI models trained on specific individuals, logos, etc. to identify targets in thousands of photos.

- Link analysis to map personal relationships not evident from public records.

These techniques allowed us at IntelEdge to gather in-depth intelligence on the activist group like biographies of key people, funding sources, and a website that had been taken down but reconstructed through their analysis. This provided Tactix early warnings and recommendations to address the opposition group's strategies and motivations.

In conclusion, the presentation demonstrated how IntelEdge's unique AI and open source intelligence capabilities can solve real business problems faced by companies. By leveraging techniques like advanced keyword signatures, chatter analysis, image recognition and link mapping across multiple languages and online platforms, IntelEdge was able to gather targeted intelligence that provided early warnings and strategic insights. This allowed Tactix to effectively counter misinformation and better understand future actions from an activist opposition group.

IntelEdge shows how cutting-edge technology can deliver tangible business outcomes when applied to address specific challenges, helping clients achieve their critical success factors. Our solutions highlight the power of AI and open source intelligence for the ever-critical competitive advantage; your edge.