IHLS TV: The Future of Cyber-Intelligence

IHLS TV: The Future of Cyber-Intelligence

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Cyberspace is massive, flooded with almost incomprehensible amounts of information – some real, some wrong, some biased and some nonsensical. How can you use this ocean of data and produce useful intelligence?

According to Esti Peshin, Director of Cyber Service at IAI, the answer is complicated. Cyberspace is divided into several areas – the web we all know and use, social networks, restricted-access sites and even the mysterious “darknet”. The area you comb for information has to mach the nature of the information you’re looking for, with the search itself being based on what’s known as EEI – Esential Elements of Information.

When it comes to reliability, said Peshin, we have to assume that everything we gather online is suspicious. The only way to evaluate the reliability of a source is to use it over time, assessing whether the data was actually beneficial. Another way to determine the reliability of a piece of information is to cross-reference it with data from other, reliable sources.

IHLS – Israel Homeland Security

There are many forms of intelligence gathering, one of the most important being OSINT, or Open Source intelligence. OSINT is, in fact, gathering information on the open web, a very low-cost option compared to other means of intelligence gathering. However, added Peshin, not all the data we’re looking for finds its way online – traditional intelligence gathering operations must be conducted simultaneously.

It’s hard to assess how successful is OSINT compared to traditional intelligence, concluded Peshin, due to the success or failure of intelligence gathering operations remaining classified most of the time, out of the public’s reach.