Open-source intelligence (OSINT) services

Why does your organization require OSINT services?

What is OSINT used for in practice? The short answer is: to stay ahead of the competitors. Information obtained in time gives you significant (!) advantages when making important business decisions.

The long answer is that OSINT intelligence is a universal tool for business development. Let us give you a few real examples that will demonstrate the possibilities of open-source intelligence gathering. In all of these examples, Molfar's clients gained a competitive advantage that preserved and increased their profits.

1. The competitors lost a large order, and Molfar's client got it instead. We found and verified the contacts of the decision-makers in the company that was choosing its contractors. After that, managers of Molfar’s client contacted the company's representatives directly, held a presentation, offered a discount, and thus received the order. These are the results of successful work by Molfar analysts.
2. Molfar's client managed to avoid loosing millions of dollars. OSINT acts like a flashlight that shines into the dark corners of your company. In this case, we investigated each of the 30 people in the company's top management to find out which of them was collaborating with our client's competitors. We found two of them: based on OSINT collection process and, to be more specific, social media analysis, we confirmed that they visited the competitors' offices. This way, we prevented the loss of production technologies that could have caused losing tens of millions of dollars by Molfar's client. There were two phases in open-source intelligence. At the second stage, we investigated 2,800 rank-and-file employees and made recommendations on how to terminate cooperation with people with criminal records, far-right views (too far) and other critical vulnerabilities, including reputational, that were not identified at the interview stage. So, Molfar saved the day again.
3. Thanks to Molfar's open-source intelligence services, the company added two specialists to its board of directors, who quickly raised $20 million in investment. It was a crypto trading company with a big name that we won't mention. There were 20 candidates for the board of directors, but we selected them in three stages. What is necessary for OSINT in this case? Investigation services require expertise. That's why at each stage we engaged researchers with different areas of expertise: crypto trading, financial management, and law. Interestingly, one of the 20 candidates turned out to be a fraudster with an unfinished court case. Thus, a well-timed intelligence report enabled Molfar's client to make the right choice based on clear facts and information.

Intelligence is not a panacea for mistakes, but a powerful tool for business development. If you are interested in examples of Molfar's work, please contact us, and we will be happy to provide you with detailed cases as close as possible to your request.  
 

Thanks to Molfar's open-source intelligence services, the company added two specialists to its board of directors, who quickly raised $20 million in investment. It was a crypto trading company with a big name that we won't mention. There were 20 candidates for the board of directors, but we selected them in three stages. What is necessary for OSINT in this case? Investigation services require expertise. That's why at each stage we engaged researchers with different areas of expertise: crypto trading, financial management, and law. Interestingly, one of the 20 candidates turned out to be a fraudster with an unfinished court case. Thus, a well-timed intelligence report enabled Molfar's client to make the right choice based on clear facts and information.

Intelligence is not a panacea for mistakes, but a powerful tool for business development. If you are interested in examples of Molfar's work, please contact us, and we will be happy to provide you with detailed cases as close as possible to your request.

Why choose Molfar OSINT investigation services?

The Molfar agency has been conducting investigations since 2019. Our public investigations have been covered by all the world's well-known media: The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloomberg, The Times and dozens of others. Molfar's online OSINT investigations were also published by all major Ukrainian media because this is our country, and we are actively working to uncover the internal enemies of Ukrainian democracy.

And, as we have already said, OSINT investigation services is our expertise. The possibilities of open-source intelligence gathering are revealed only when you need answers that seem impossible to find. And for us, it is possible, that's why we are Molfar.

 What do we offer?

Background check on a person

We conduct open-source intelligence on a specific person, such as the CEO of a competitor or the owner of a startup. The reasons for collecting information can be very different, but we do not need to know them. The final background report on a person includes their biography, research on all business processes of the person, including offshore activities and nominal connections, personal contacts, data on movable property and real estate owned, public negativity associated with the person, research on relatives and business figures related to the person, and much more. We provide intelligence services individually for a specific request, so when the work is done, we send you a final report on the agreed points.

Corporate intelligence

The result is bigger than a person's background search OSINT report: it includes analysis of employees, research of contractors, legal entities used by the company to conduct its business, official and unofficial property owned by the company, analysis of technical information, establishing connections to create an extensive scheme of relations between entities, etc. OSINT closes 96% of requests for corporate intelligence.

Market research services

It takes much more time to conduct an intelligence report on a specific industry than to study a person or a company. This information is used to make strategic decisions. If you order investigation services of an entire market, you most likely understand why you need it. So, we will find a common language. This research is needed to launch of a new product/brand, a decision to scale the company, open new branches, or vice versa – to reduce production facilities in a region/country.

HUMINT

HUMINT also has other names: competitive intelligence, social engineering, sometimes people say "agent intelligence," but the latter has a rude tone. At Molfar, we put this type of research in a separate category because it's the right thing to do. Although in practical use, HUMINT almost always accompanies OSINT services: this type of research is used as an additional tool to obtain even more information. For example: when researching the market, we can call the service centers of all companies in a niche to conduct a stress test and identify strengths/weaknesses in the service. Or, when researching a company, we can conduct an interview with one of the top executives under the guise of a journalist to get insider information. The third example is that when conducting a background check on a person, we talk to his or her former business partners to gather additional information for the research. In tandem, the possibilities of OSINT and HUMINT intelligence are endless.

Military investigation services 

One of the areas of our work is GEOINT: we look for the exact locations of people who pose a threat to the national welfare of the country. In this way, we find terrorists, criminals, violators of international law and other potentially dangerous individuals. In addition to location search, OSINT intelligence allows us to analyze satellite images, both archived and newly received. Using satellite images, Molfar’s researchers can identify: military and/or civilian equipment, crowds of people, defensive structures (barriers), trenches, mass graves, and much more. Open-source intelligence is a powerful tool that helps plan and conduct military operations. In addition, Molfar's researchers have extensive experience in everything related to professional financial intelligence (FININT): searching for offshore legal entities, hidden assets, sanctioned partners or counterparties, nominees and fictitious persons. It may not be very correct, but we consider financial intelligence to be a part of military intelligence because it is an element of corporate warfare.

If you are interested in any specific services from Molfar, just write to us – we will provide all the details and answers to your questions in private correspondence.

What is open-source intelligence (OSINT)?

It’s time to once more ask what does OSINT stands for? It is a tool for business development. In a broader sense, it is a set of methods and algorithms for obtaining information from open sources. 

What is open-source information? This is any information available to all Internet users on the web. The only difference is that Molfar's researchers can search for the information you need quickly and professionally.

You can use the collected data in the business, political or economic spheres, or leave it exclusively for private use. However, we would like to emphasize that Molfar’s researchers do not perform the tasks of so-called "private detectives", most of which consist of collecting information about the actions and movements of ex-partners, ex-wives or ex-husbands.
  
Investigation services from Molfar is a powerful investment in business development. It also helps in the planning and implementation of military operations.

How to use OSINT? 

Use the information obtained in the process of intelligence to benefit your business. Or against your competitors, which also means for the benefit of your business. We won't ask you why you need the data, but we will ensure that it is correct and supported by the evidence. 

OSINT examples 

We prefer explaining How OSINT is used with basic open-source intelligence examples. And the most common is when a girl checks the social media of a guy she's going on a date with. Or vice versa: a guy checks a girl's social media. The process of checking social media is an element of a research. Whether in private life or in business, social media analysis provides a huge amount of information that can potentially be useful. And in practice, it always turns out to be useful.

Let's scale this example to the business sphere: Molfar's OSINT analysts can research your customers' social networks to collect the information needed to develop and launch an advertising campaign. Or they can investigate the social networks of your top managers to find information vulnerabilities. In fact, even experts often write completely unnecessary and even dangerous things on private and business pages, or post photos of documents or locations – all of which are potential information vulnerabilities.

What does an OSINT report look like?

We provide you with a final report within the agreed timeframe, and if we cannot complete the work on time, we notify you and reduce the cost of the work.

Below, we will give you open-source intelligence examples in the form of published investigations. All investigations are written based on our typical intelligence reviews: they have a slightly different tone, there is an author's language, but they all consist of 85% of the data, gathered by our analysts. So, just follow the links and see what does an OSINT report looks like.  

Please note: we provide so many public examples related to Russia and Russians for one reason – it is a terrorist country, and these investigations are part of Molfar's resistance against the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation on the information front. The public disclosure of private data of civilized people is prohibited, and we follow this rule.

• Background check on a person
  • A report on a person from Putin's inner circle
  • A case of researching candidates for hiring: the profit amounted to $20 million
• Market research services
  • Research of the military equipment market in Western countries
  • Market research of iOS and Android applications in Ukraine
• Corporate intelligence
  • Pin-Up.
  • Drove
• HUMINT
  • Confirmation of a scheme for stealing products by contacting under the cover of a legend
  • Research of the cloud services market in Ukraine using HUMINT
• Military investigation services
  • Fact-checking of a terrorist attack: a missile strike on a mall
  • Identification of schemes for illegal trade in sanctioned goods through third countries

We provide all OSINT services on behalf of Molfar agency under the conditions of strict confidentiality. You will never see the results of our business-oriented work in the public space. All examples provided above are volunteer projects of Molfar and an element of information warfare – therefore, these publications do not violate the terms of service.

OSINT benefits

Why is OSINT important and who uses OSINT – we already answered these questions. Now it’s time to look on benefits.

1. We work with large volumes of information that we collect on the Internet. Molfar's researchers make it professionally, looking at all available open sources and not avoiding paid registries in different countries.
2. The speed of task completion when conducting OSINT gathering is very high, so if you need to get data quickly, it is a perfect choice. The advantage is that the search process does not depend on third-party factors.
3. It is safe. No one will know what we are looking for and who is ordering the search, and there is no need to undergo security checks to order an OSINT services.
4. You can perform dozens of different tasks with the help of OSINT investigation services because it is a universal tool. Molfar experts can both check the legal aspects of tender documents and collect information about the characteristics of confectionery products in Western Europe – there are almost no restrictions on the areas.
5. If you take a comprehensive approach to OSINT intelligence, we can create a passive monitoring system for you on a specific request. This way, you will receive key information as soon as it becomes publicly available, without the need to conduct active research every time.

If you are still not convinced that intelligence service will solve your issues, don't hesitate to contact us.

Are OSINT services legal? 

Yes, they are completely legal. From start to finish. We work only with open sources and paid registries. This is publicly available information collected professionally quickly, thoroughly, and in depth. You can even learn open-source intelligence on your own, we have a training course for that 

If you have any questions or are ready to discuss a specific task for Molfar’s analysts, please contact us at [email protected].