Many people find OSINT fascinating and intriguing, so they are willing to spend hours investigating for personal reasons. What if you make this business profitable? What kind of work requires such skills and specialists? In fact, in a world where most information is digitized, there are many options. Let's take a look/
Is a qualification or special education required?
The beauty of OSINT jobs is that colleges and universities do not have a separate specialty in this area, so you are unlikely to be required a diploma. Although there are exceptions. For example, you might need a degree in cybersecurity if a company hires you to find a security breach. Or, financial education and work experience will help track funds and assets.
However, companies that require OSINT specialists usually conduct interviews, assess the overall level of critical thinking, and give a test assignment. If you prove your ability to learn and apply logic, they hire you.
Some companies are ready to teach you all the OSINT techniques and tools specific to their goals and audiences. For this reason, people with almost any education and work experience can find OSINT-related jobs.
Where can you apply your OSINT skills?
Searching for information from open sources can be necessary for many people for various reasons. Consequently, there are many types of jobs that use OSINT and need people who know how to search.
Private investigations
The first thing that comes to mind when people hear about open-source intelligence is secret agents and detectives. Actually, they are not far from the truth. Private investigation agencies often need professionals who can collect or verify the information for clients.
For example, finding a person knowing only a phone number or checking that a match on Tinder is not a scammer. We are talking about the collection of information from open sources, which is often enough to fulfill most requests. Although such specialists may be needed for more complex investigations: while one employee is conducting an OSINT investigation, the detective is watching the person on the streets.
Media and journalism
A significant part of journalists' work is not interviewing or doing live broadcasts but searching for materials, connections, and events for the news. Especially if a person works in the field of investigative journalism. In this case, data searching from open sources is the main thing for writing material.
For this reason, you can become an excellent journalist in this genre if you are interested in OSINT and have good writing skills.
In another case, you may be hired as an investigator who provides data for reports or articles but is not involved in the actual writing process. In general, any work related to data and information may require someone who knows how to search for and verify it.
Finance and taxes
The field of finance has many excellent opportunities for OSINT specialists as there are always people who want to keep their money safe and those who try to get it illegally.
For example, money laundering, financial fraud, and tax evasion are very common crimes in any country. However, private clients or public authorities need to trace all connections to the suspect to detect and prove those crimes. Data is also required to detect insurance fraud, collect debts from a person's hidden accounts, or decide on issuing a loan.
People who know how to use OSINT tools are needed for all these purposes..
Tech and the Internet
Advances in technology also lead to new security issues that companies often fail to keep track of. For this reason, they need people who can keep their data safe online.
For example, employees may intentionally or unintentionally leak sensitive data into the network. Therefore, constantly tracking the digital footprint can save a company from unpleasant consequences for its reputation. At the same time, looking for such a trail of competitors can help you better plan your strategies and understand the market.
Open source verification also strengthens companies' cyber defenses, since analysts can indicate a security breach by discovering and tracking leaked data. Hence, OSINT specialists can be helpful in this department.
Recruiting and HR
All companies want to find an employee who is perfect for the job and will stay with them for a long time. How do you find someone like that and make sure they tell the truth in an interview? View social networks. Of course, such practice is a gray area, but sometimes a company is forced to know everything about a potential employee. For example, if the work is related to finances or classified information.
OSINT can also be useful for detecting and preventing internal problems. For example, an HR specialist can prevent internal conflict or the spread of ideas that harm the company's reputation by seeing a disturbing post on social media.
Of course, headhunting is an area where OSINT is highly required. Recruiters need to find the best specialist and understand their interests to make an offer that they cannot refuse. They can do it only by scanning open sources.
Conclusion
Thus, the market offers enough jobs that require basic or specialized OSINT skills. The main thing is to determine the scope and google the right words. The request "OSINT jobs" will likely not give you anything. However, "investigator", "open data analyst", or "open-source researcher" will provide you with much more results.
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📌 For everyone who really wants to learn OSINT, we recommend OSINT training courses from Molfar:
▪️ Basic: for personal study and receiving a knowledge base + all the necessary tools for work.
▪️ Advanced: for scaling processes, gathering a team and learning HUMINT.
