Protective intelligence could well be redefined as proactive intelligence as if it offers law enforcement and intelligence agencies the abilities to obtain intelligence, analyze and monitor threat actors before they act.
Analysts daily face the task of how to assess a threat, who is behind the perceived threat, and assess actions to take to monitor and protect assets. As part of a protective intelligence investigation, they can ensure a threat is never realized.
How investigations mature over time depends not only on the analysts’ experience and skill but the depth and width of the software tools they have available to aid their inquiries and analysis.
Investigation tools can be used to build a structure that assesses the threat actor’s journey and allows protective intelligence analysts to understand the individual’s psychology, behavior, language, and actions.
During these steps, teams can pinpoint potential weaknesses in a threat actor’s character traits and identify hostile behavior junctures that could critically play a part in actions being undertaken.
As much as analysts can watch and wait, they can also develop predictive intelligence to anticipate events ahead.
Collection of data that may not be relevant now but could become operational in weeks and months ahead, allowing analysts to look into the future and assume worst-case scenarios that can be managed against.
This further builds into the protective intelligence profiles of allowing companies, intelligence units, and law enforcement building frameworks that enable policies and procedures to become agile and more honed to mitigate threats.
This allows for resources to be more efficiently deployed in the right areas to develop security measures.
Tools for Protective Intelligence
Data collection can be through various means, but the most common are Artificial Intelligence, machine-learning down, field observations, and physical notes. Protective intelligence is only as good as the data that can be retrieved and analyzed quickly.
Cobwebs’ portfolio of capabilities is powered to deliver real-time results and to aid protective intelligence investigations.
These include Natural Language Processing (NL) algorithms for AI text and entities analyses in minutes, AI Sentiment Analysis, which enables analysts and investigators to gain insights into threat actors’ sentiment, and the structuring of big data from unstructured data to provide a virtual, holistic view.
Analysts can also utilize geo-trending hashtags and keywords to follow trends and receive relevant information. At the same time, Machine Learning algorithms improve AI capabilities in terms of text analysis and face recognition, providing investigators with faster and more reliable results.
Protective Intelligence is best used when investigation and analysis combine into a high-level, structured response, acting in sync to provide a powerful combination.
But all acting individually or in isolation with others would not only render useless results or intelligence that an analyst may sit on without understanding its relevance. Bringing in these factors ensures that no intelligence need be missed or only come to relevance when a threat act has been followed through to devastating effect.
With protective intelligence an investigation can develop into more than seeking to protect an asset. Both can be used to assess a threat actor’s likely routes, what information they have gleaned from pinpointing a potential attack, and how analysts can test for vulnerabilities in that plan.
Analysts can now be in a position to out-think the threat actor in pace, speed and attack. Devoting efficient resources, time and intelligence can often mean the difference between an attack and an intended attack.
Cobweb Technologies’ data-driven monitoring platforms and tools provide the critical insights that authorities need to gain real-time intelligence to watch and prevent threats to the community closely.
