The Impact of Open Source Intelligence on Cybersecurity

The way that organisations use information technology (IT) has changed significantly in the past two decades. The emergence of new trends, such as social media, cloud computing (in its various guises) and the consumerisa. tion of IT, have all had profound impacts on the way in which organisations seeking greater efficiency, cost savings and new business opportunities share, manipulate and exploit information. Critically, from a cybersecurity perspec. tive, this nexus of forces has caused organisations and their employees to ]expose more information online than ever before.1 Although much of this information is benign, some of it may constitute sensitive data which can then be exploited by increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals who use it to support their efforts to penetrate organisations’ IT systems and steal valu. able data or disrupt services. This chapter starts by summarising the recent merging of different forms of IT and how this has left organisations sus. ceptible to OSINT-supported cyber attacks. It then goes on to dissect these new threats, outlining organisational strategies for risk mitigation, before discussing emerging challenges.