Here are a couple of predictions from Dr Brenton Cooper, pictured CEO and co-founder, Fivecast. First; from police to major companies, open-source intelligence technology will be more embedded.
Integrating OSINT into daily workflows will gain momentum across various fields, such as insurance-fraud detection and processing applications for licenses or tenders in security-sensitive public sector areas. Manual methods will gradually decline.
AI-powered OSINT is expanding beyond police, immigration, and security vetting, increasingly impacting the corporate sector. Enhanced configurability allows organisations to automate the monitoring of numerous sources, including commercial databases, public records, millions of social media platforms, as well as the deep and dark web. Businesses can define content thresholds aligned with their interests and combine various detection tools to activate specific rules.
Global companies are leveraging this technology to identify insider threats, scams, activist interference, and potential violent protests. Actionable insights are integrated into the workflows of key personnel, allowing them to make earlier, informed decisions by combining OSINT with other intelligence sources. For instance, insider risk monitoring can reveal sudden lifestyle changes or unexplained wealth that may indicate suspicious activity. Companies can then trace these individuals across the web and social media to identify additional concerning links.
Companies can utilise this technology to screen job applicants and contractors, as well as to stay ahead of potential threats from hostile state, extremist, or activist groups that recruit and organise online. Integrating this technology into their standard digital workflows allows them to act proactively to safeguard people and property, greatly improving situational awareness. More companies will recognise that integrating advanced OSINT technologies into their workflows enhances their resilience.
Second: ‘ethical AI’ will bring online crime out into the open.
Generative AI is making threat-policing harder – and that is only going to increase. Criminals use this evolving technology for improved accuracy of phishing campaigns, and for deepfake voice and video impersonation in fraud, money-laundering and other scams.
Thanks to AI, hostile states no longer have to rely solely on criminalised data experts and hackers for their attacks. It is becoming increasingly simple to develop sophisticated disinformation campaigns.
Generative AI will create much of the content for them and automate its delivery. This will present significant challenges for all organisations – not just government agencies – in the verification and attribution of content and communications they receive.
But AI is also on the side of the good people. Access to ethically-guided, AI-driven open-source intelligence (OSINT) will be crucial for early detection of groups involved in malicious activities. AI will assist authorities in understanding information flows and identifying when content is machine-generated, with OSINT providing additional context. It can give valuable clues about the identities of the groups or actors behind suspicious activities, helping organisations assess the threat.
OSINT derived from publicly and commercially accessible sources offers behavioural insights that are not available through static databases or news outlets. Implementing ethical AI in OSINT allows organisations to combine this data effectively to meet various business needs, such as complying with KYC and AML regulations.
About the company
Fivecast is based in Adelaide, South Australia; it offers vetting, fraud and financial crime and insider threat detection products. See also its blog.
More in the February 2026 edition of Professional Security Magazine.
