Open Source Intelligence Insights and Investigations Resources
Reframing Wildlife Crime: International Networks and Organised Gangs
When most people think of wildlife crime, they might see it as being a relatively isolated affair. It’s easy to imagine individual poachers – or small groups at most – killing individual animals to make a profit; a distressing image, but ultimately a crime whose only victims are animals. In reality, though, wildlife crime is…
How Law Enforcement can use OSINT to fight human trafficking
By Rebecca Lindley
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), though undoubtedly useful, has sometimes been considered a secondary method of investigation by law ...
What is the Future of OSINT in Police Investigations?
By Blackdot Solutions
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) has long been recognised as an important source of insight into criminal activity and, ...
Is OSINT the key to fighting welfare system fraud?
By Blackdot Solutions
In the financial year ending 2023, £6.4 billion was lost to fraudulent welfare claims in the UK.1 This ...
What will the Anti-Financial Crime Landscape look like in 2024?
By Blackdot Solutions
2023 in review 2023 was a busy year for regulators, financial institutions and criminals alike. Significant enforcement actions ...
Why OSINT is the key to implementing the new EU anti-money laundering package
By Rebecca Lindley
Last week, the EU Council and Parliament made a provisional agreement on its new anti-money laundering package, which ...
Introducing the OSINT Handbook: the Comprehensive Guide to OSINT Investigations
By Blackdot Solutions
Who Should Read the OSINT Handbook? Whether you’re a seasoned OSINT investigator or just starting out, the OSINT ...
AML Technology Trends: What You Need To Know in 2024
By Stuart Clarke
The complex world of anti-money laundering (AML) continues to evolve rapidly. As a result, regulators and authorities are ...
Culture, Collaboration, Circumvention: What we learnt at Offshore Alert London 2023
By Rebecca Lindley
Last week we attended Offshore Alert London, a leading event for investigators and intelligence-gatherers in the UK. For ...
Using OSINT To Counter Transnational Organised Crime
By Rebecca Lindley
For law enforcement and government agencies fighting transnational organised crime, the question is no longer if they should ...
Leveraging OSINT for Public-Private Partnerships
By Blackdot Solutions
The fight against financial crime is a global, multi-party endeavour which requires active involvement from both the public ...
How to Stay Secure During Your OSINT Investigation: Security, Privacy and OSINT in 2024
By Stuart Clarke
Since its inception, the world wide web has undergone significant changes, and is now home to over 1,200 ...
Fusing OSINT with internal data for better risk management
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction We live in a data-rich world. From internal information collected at different touch points during a client ...
How Financial Intelligence Units can Unlock the Power of OSINT
By Blackdot Solutions
In today’s world of ever-evolving and increasingly sophisticated financial crime, the role of financial intelligence units (FIUs) has ...
How to Conduct Effective Adverse Media Screening
By Blackdot Solutions
What is effective adverse media screening? Effective adverse media screening is a regulatory expectation, a key part of ...
5 Best OSINT Tools in 2024
By Blackdot Solutions
Open source intelligence (OSINT) is an increasingly important part of investigation best practices in contexts ranging from AML ...
Unlocking Better Sanctions Investigations with Videris and OpenSanctions
By Charli Foreman
The following article summarises a recent webinar we ran with OpenSanctions. You can view a full recording of ...
Three Strategies To Make Adverse Media Checks More Efficient
By Rebecca Lindley
Why are Adverse Media Checks so important? Adverse media checks, also known as negative news screening, are essential ...
How to use OSINT for Supply Chain Due Diligence
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction Why is Supply Chain Due Diligence important? Effective Supply Chain Due Diligence is becoming more important than ...
Optimisation Without the Disruption: An Anti-Financial Crime Technology Buyer’s Guide
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction Interest in using technology and artificial intelligence to combat financial crime has soared in recent years, supported ...
How to use OSINT for Brand Protection
By Blackdot Solutions
Practicing good brand protection is crucial to a company’s success. It helps maintain integrity, protect revenue and keep ...
Open Source Investigation Best Practices in 2024
By Blackdot Solutions
Open source intelligence (OSINT) was developed as a military intelligence discipline in order to identify and understand threats ...
Advances in the intelligence-led approach
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction In the face of stricter regulatory requirements and an evolving risk landscape, an intelligence-led approach to anti-financial ...
How to Use OSINT to Identify Connections to Sanctioned Entities
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction Whether to avoid regulatory action or to uphold the values of an institution, identifying sanctioned entities is ...
3 Key Trends in the Use of Corporate Records to Fight Financial Crime
By Charli Foreman
Introduction In our recent webinar, Charles Brown, Head of Community at Blackdot Solutions, and Hugo Veazey, Financial Crime ...
The Impact of Investigative Journalism on OSINT and Financial Crime
By Blackdot Solutions
At Blackdot’s recent ‘Future of OSINT’ event, our Head of Community Charles Brown had the pleasure of sitting ...
Sanctions Evasion: The Lessons of Ukraine – Part 2
By Matthew Redhead
Part 2: Implications for the Private Sector In a recent blog post, we looked at how Russia has ...
Sanctions Evasion: The Lessons of Ukraine
By Matthew Redhead
Part 1: Russian Evasion More than a year on since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, western ...
How to Implement a FRAML Strategy in Three Steps
By Rebecca Lindley
Introduction Adopting a combined approach to fraud and anti-money laundering (AML), sometimes known as FRAML, has recently been ...
How reliable is Open Source Intelligence?
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction In an era of disinformation where anyone can post anything on the internet, can businesses really trust online ...
Is Reducing False Positive AML Alerts Even Possible?
By Charles Brown
As many as 95% of AML transaction monitoring alerts are false positives, costing billions in wasted investigation time, ...
4 OSINT Trends and Challenges on the Horizon
By Charles Brown
OSINT — or Open Source Intelligence — has existed for decades. The process of collating and analysing publicly ...
Three reasons why audit must be a part of your AML investigation process
By Caroline Tatam
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is the process of gathering and analysing publicly available data to produce actionable intelligence. ...
How to use OSINT to Detect and Prevent Fraud
By Blackdot Solutions
Fraud is a growing problem. From identity theft to mortgage fraud, criminality is thriving, especially where non-face-to-face interactions are ...
Revealing Fraudulent Activity on Companies House with OSINT Technology
By Rebecca Lindley
The UK Companies House framework for registering companies is viewed increasingly as one of the easiest ways for ...
Keeping Bad Company
By Rebecca Lindley
Why Open Source Intelligence is the key to investigating financial crime through Companies House Recent estimates suggest that ...
3 Tips for Supply Chain Risk Management Using OSINT
By Rebecca Lindley
The world relies on global supply chains, but managing increasingly disparate supply chain infrastructure has become complex — ...
A Guide to AML Investigation Techniques: Tips, Requirements and OSINT
By Blackdot Solutions
Illicit actors engaged in money laundering are growing all the more sophisticated, harnessing technological advancements to avoid detection ...
What is Investigative Screening?
By Rebecca Lindley
A new approach to adverse media in effective financial crime risk management Adverse media is used across numerous ...
Conducting Background Checks with OSINT
By Blackdot Solutions
Background checks are fundamental when it comes to forming business relationships with new employees, clients, customers and partners. ...
How Five Stones Intelligence uses Videris to add value and see the bigger picture
By Rebecca Lindley
About Five Stones intelligence 5 Stones intelligence (5Si)® is a leading Professional Services company based in Miami, Florida, with ...
What is Enhanced Due Diligence?
By Blackdot Solutions
Investigations, Processes and OSINT In an evolving compliance and regulatory environment, it’s crucial that organisations understand exactly who ...
4 Strategies Your Financial Crime Investigations Unit Needs in 2022
By Charles Brown
A recently published report, authored by the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, has underlined the severity of the ...
What’s in a document?
By Stuart Clarke
How Videris document search helps investigators to unlock value in their structured data A true end-to-end platform Ever ...
Applying Open Source Intelligence to Cyber Crime Investigations
By Stuart Clarke
Cyber crime is now the fastest-growing type of crime globally. According to a recent study, over 71 million ...
Four Investigative Challenges Videris Charts Can Solve
By Mark Cooper
How the right charting tools can increase investigation effectiveness When carrying out complex investigations, investigators can uncover a ...
5 Open Source Intelligence Gathering Techniques
By Charles Brown
Open source intelligence, or OSINT, is the collection, processing and analysis of open source data (OSD) for investigative ...
Mapping sanctioned entities and their networks with Videris
By Stuart Clarke
In this case study, we’re going to take a look at how Videris can help investigators to map ...
OSINT: The Key to Dark Web Investigations for Law Enforcement
By Stuart Clarke
The dark web has gained widespread notoriety in recent times, with increased scrutiny on surface web activities appearing ...
Investigator-led Investigations and the NatWest Case
By Rebecca Lindley
Can Investigators Help to Improve AML/CFT Compliance Programmes? Introduction In December 2021, the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) announced ...
Applying OSINT to Fraud Prevention and Corporate Investigations
By Charles Brown
In the digital era of the 21st-century, crimes such as fraud, illicit trade and security are evolving and ...
Best AML Software for Risk Management
By Stuart Clarke
The UN now estimates that between 2 and 5% of global GDP is laundered annually (around $2 trillion ...
Going beyond watchlists
By Charles Brown
The role of OSINT in managing sanctions risk Recent events in Ukraine have brought about the imposition of ...
How TRAFFIC uses Videris to fight environmental crime
By Rebecca Lindley
About TRAFFIC TRAFFIC is a leading non-governmental organisation working globally on trade in wild animals and plants, in ...
The Investigator-Centric Approach: A Practical Guide
By Charles Brown
In our article ‘Investigator-Centric Approach to Financial Crime: Back to the Future or Back to Basics?’ we discussed ...
6 Ways Videris Augments Your Investigations
By Stuart Clarke
The sheer volume of open source data (OSD) available from a variety of sources has transformed best practices ...
Investigator-Centric Approach to Financial Crime: Back to the Future or Back to Basics?
By Samantha Sheen
In November 2021, Blackdot Solution's Head of Community, Charles Brown, hosted a webinar featuring Nick Lewis, Group Head, ...
New Year’s Resolutions For Fighting Financial Crime
By Stuart Clarke
New Year often encourages me to think about the challenges, opportunities and emerging trends that will be at ...
How Schillings uses Videris to provide a faster service to its clients
By Rebecca Lindley
Introduction Schillings is an international reputation, privacy and security consultancy staffed by investigators, risk consultants, legal experts, and ...
How Much Time Can Videris Save Your Investigation Process?
By Rebecca Lindley
The volume of data available in the public sphere has grown enormously in recent years. With this, the ...
My Keyword is Broken
By Stuart Clarke
Exploring alternatives to keyword searching with Stuart Clarke When I started my career as an investigator, data volumes ...
Dark Web vs Deep Web vs Surface Web
By Stuart Clarke
And How to Incorporate Each Within OSINT Investigations Many consider the internet to be one monolithic structure accessible ...
How Videris has supported Danske Bank’s Financial Crime Compliance programme
By Blackdot Solutions
Introduction In order to strengthen financial crime detection, prevention and investigation capabilities, Danske Bank wanted to improve OSINT ...
How to Conduct an Ethical OSINT Investigation
By Rebecca Lindley
OSINT Regulations and the Ethics of Data Collection When it comes to using data, many modern organisations are ...
OSINT Sources: What Are The Different Types of Open Source Data?
By Blackdot Solutions
Organisations within both the public and private sectors are placing increased emphasis on open source data (OSD) when ...
The Hidden Victims of Financial Crime
By Stuart Clarke
This article is part of a collection from the publication ‘The Future of Financial Crime: Voices from the ...
3 Key Takeaways from our AFC Network-centric Investigations Masterclass
By Rebecca Lindley
If you attended the Dark Money Conference, you might have caught our AFC network-centric investigations masterclass on using ...
Exploring the Pandora Papers Leaks with Videris
By Rebecca Lindley
Series: The Intelligence-Led Approach in Action Introduction In October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released ...
5 Changes to Banking Industry Compliance in 2022
By Charles Brown
The third FinCEN leak, the finalisation of Brexit negotiations, and worldwide economic disruption made 2020 a difficult year ...
Reconstructing the Fraud Triangle in Videris
By Stuart Clarke
The last two years have seen a huge rise in cases of fraud, with Action Fraud reporting a ...
What is an Intelligent Automation Platform?
By Blackdot Solutions
Why Intelligent Automation should play a key part in your investigations The digitisation of professional investigation and intelligence ...
The power of networks: What the Pandora Papers teaches us about anti-financial crime investigations
By Rebecca Lindley
Two weeks ago, the Pandora Papers pierced public consciousness. The latest in a series of exposés by the ...
Tracing a Wildlife Trafficking Network with Videris
By Stuart Clarke
Series: The Intelligence-Led Approach in Action Introduction In 2020, the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) ...
5 AML Compliance Trends in 2022
By Blackdot Solutions
The threats posed by financial crime have continued to evolve rapidly in recent years. Increased reliance on mobile ...
Scratching the Surface: Why alternative approaches to surface web search are a vital part of the OSINT investigator’s toolkit
By Stuart Clarke
In a world where 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day, the internet is a key ...
5 Advanced Open Source Investigation Techniques
By Blackdot Solutions
The proliferation of open source data - found across social media posts, self-published blogs, and other open source ...
Case Study: How CERTA uses Videris to produce actionable intelligence at speed
By Blackdot Solutions
About CERTA CERTA is a consulting firm that provides intelligence, advice and support for private corporations faced with ...
Case Study: How Berlin Risk use Videris to scope, analyse and present open source data quickly and accurately
By Blackdot Solutions
About Berlin Risk Berlin Risk was founded in 2008 to provide consultancy services to an international market. It ...
6 Things To Consider When Using Open Source Data
By Rebecca Lindley
The rapid growth of open source data (OSD) is both a strength and the largest challenge facing organisations ...
How Big Data Is Changing Anti Money Laundering
By Matthew Redhead
Today, the average person generates 1.7 megabytes of data in just one second.1 Between 2010 and 2020, the ...
What is an OSINT investigation?
By Blackdot Solutions
From AML compliance to AFC procedures, open source intelligence (OSINT sources) has become an increasingly popular method of ...
Failure to tackle money laundering may ruin more senior banking careers than the 2008 financial crisis
By Adam de Courcy Ling
Financial crime has become one of the world’s largest, and least desirable, growth industries. The world is increasingly ...
Transparency, intelligence sharing and Brexit: trends in AFC for 2021
By Rebecca Lindley
With The Dark Money Files’ Graham Barrow and Ray Blake From Brexit to Covid-19, the financial services sector ...
Choosing the right AFC tech
By Rebecca Lindley
Three key considerations The range of technology solutions targeted at Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) processes in banks is constantly ...
The AFC Investigator Revolution
By Rebecca Lindley
Why FIs should act now In April 1990 the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) issued the 40 Recommendations: a comprehensive framework ...
Regtech Innovation: Looking Beyond AI
By Charles Brown
Conversations about innovation in anti-financial crime (AFC) risk management tend to be dominated by Artificial Intelligence. Yet other ...
Hiding in Plain Sight
By Matthew Redhead
Matthew Redhead discusses tapping into the power of Open-Source Intelligence We tend to assume that ‘intelligence’, by definition, ...
Beyond box-ticking: Leveraging technology to resolve complex AML investigations
By Charles Brown
A desire to fight financial crime Over the past few years we've noticed a shift within AML and ...
Covid-19 and Fraud: A Social Pandemic?
By Charles Brown
Last week we discussed how Covid-19 has caused a surge in online activity, which has in turn impacted ...
How Covid-19 will impact the use of OSINT
By Charles Brown
Covid-19 has rapidly accelerated the growth and consumption of data as millions turn to the internet to keep ...
OSINT for Insider Threats
By Rebecca Lindley
‘Insider threat’ describes a broad range of business risks that involve an ‘insider’ – an employee, contractor or ...
