INSA Highlights Increasing Importance of Open Source

The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) Rebalance Task Force recently released its new white paper “Expectations of Intelligence in the Information Age“.

We’re obviously big fans of open source analysis, so some of the lead observations reported by the task force really hit home. Here they are, as written by INSA:

• The heightened expectations of decision makers for timely strategic warning and current intelligence can be addressed in significant ways by the IC through “open sourcing” of information.
• “Open sourcing” will not replace traditional intelligence; decision makers will continue to expect the IC to extract those secrets others are determined to keep from the United States.
• However, because decision makers will access open sources as readily as the IC, they will expect the IC to rapidly validate open source information and quickly meld it with that derived from espionage and traditional sources of collection to provide them with the knowledge desired to confidently address national security issues and events.

You can check out an interactive version of the full report here, and take a moment to visit Recorded Future to see how we’re embracing this synthesis of open source and confidential intelligence.