Intelligence analysis collects, analyzes, discovers and exploits useful information from vast quantities of communications, documents, web pages and social media content. Effective information analysis provides real-time monitoring of most sources of potentially threatening events and identifies potentially damaging information before it propagates.
Intelligence analysis for national security
When we talk about intelligence analysis, most people can’t help but draw comparisons to the movies, especially to the James Bond films where Agent 007, in his fight to prevent disasters and protect the people against enemies of national security, is backed by a wealth of information seemingly at the fingertips of a small army of analysts. While the techniques may be overstated, the role of intelligence and its ability to help us understand information about the world—a crucial element for national security—is not.
Intelligence analysis can provide insight into important questions (why? and what happens next?) in the wake of events, identifying even abstract relationships and asymmetrical threats that may be easily overlooked, in order to prevent future threats. Open source information such as that on the internet and on social media platforms is a valuable resource for intelligence analysis today, especially for government agencies who hope to prevent the next 9/11.
Corporate intelligence analysis
However, national security is not the only area that can benefit from intelligence analysis. Companies are facing new and rapidly emerging operational security threats that require specific tools for collecting information to manage asset protection, brand reputation, supply chain risks, counterfeiting, intellectual property, competitor analysis and more.
To understand why intelligence analysis plays a key role for companies as well as governments, let’s take a look at just some of the events that generate operational risk:
▪ Internal Fraud: Misappropriation of assets, intentional mismarking of positions, bribery.
▪ External Fraud: Theft of information, hacking damage, third-party theft and forgery.
▪ Employment Practices and Workplace Safety: Discrimination, workers’ compensation, employee health and safety.
▪ Clients, Products & Business Practices: Market manipulation, antitrust, improper trade, product defects, fiduciary breaches, account churning.
▪ Damage to Physical Assets: Natural disasters, terrorism, vandalism.
▪ Business Disruption & Systems Failures: Utility disruptions, software failures, hardware failures.
▪ Execution, Delivery & Process Management: Data entry errors, accounting errors, failed mandatory reporting, negligent loss of client assets.
These are just some of the reasons why intelligence analysis is a critical success factor for any organization, and why making in-depth analysis requires innovative tools .
The value of semantic technology for intelligence analysis
Our semantic technology supports intelligence analysts and knowledge workers for in-depth analysis, helping prevent risks rather than reacting to them. Through its ability to read and understand the meaning of words, his technology is able to recognize concepts, categories and relevant entities in the variety of ways that they may be expressed. In processing unstructured information, it offers immediate and actionable results. Because, as Churchill said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results”.
