As technology advances and takes a more prominent role in everyday life, people learn to embrace it and adjust how they communicate, travel, manage finances, work, and more. Criminals have done the same, using social media and the deep and dark web to communicate and conduct illegal operations. Police and government investigations must adapt their usual crime-fighting methods to be able to keep up.
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WEBINT emerges as the primary tool in law enforcement investigations
Web intelligence (WEBINT) is critical in the fight against crime today. From investigating a potential terrorist threat to robbery, fraud, cyber-crime, and more – government agencies and police forces can use the vast amounts of data available online to expedite their investigations and save lives.
Open-source intelligence refers to publicly available data online, whereas web intelligence can include information that is not necessarily public (i.e. data on the dark and deep web). A web intelligence tool is commonly used to prevent cyber-crime and in cyber investigations – but it can be used for security intelligence and criminal investigations of all kinds. For example, by analyzing data, web intelligence tools can act as crime prediction software. AI crime prediction is simply a matter of identifying patterns in human behavior online, from the content they post and how they interact with the people they’re connected to. Since so much data and analysis is involved, it must be done by an AI or big-data solution.
Deep and dark web monitoring enables even more in-depth data discovery and analysis and is used by analysts in terrorist investigations and major crime investigations. Implementing this type of tool in police forces nation-wide can significantly reduce crime by speeding up the investigation process while making it more efficient and reliable. Police can use it for basic processes, like criminal background investigations, or to monitor and analyze the behavior of a potential suspect using public data available online.
What are the key components of the optimal WEBINT tool?
An effective web intelligence tool needs to address the challenges investigation teams face in today’s tech-led world:
- Massive amounts of data: There’s simply too much data out there for any human to analyze on their own. Communication continues to advance and the right web intelligence tools can find the threats and critical information camouflaged in social media posts, blogs, comments, and more.
- Siloed systems: Analysts that want to analyze the data available to them have to work with numerous sources and systems instead of having everything in one place. This not only wastes resources, it increases the chances of critical data being missed as they can’t always see the big picture.
- Human speeds are too slow: By the time an analyst discovers and analyzes data on their own, it could be too late. Real-time data analysis and the reaction is critical in a web intelligence tool for criminal investigations.
