How Monitoring Current Events Like the 2020 US Election Can Increase Organizational Security
Tensions around the US election are high for both ends of the political spectrum. There has been an increase in polarization and militarization and many Signal customers have expressed concern.
There are numerous threats that could evolve to seriously impact an organization, from natural disasters, to acts of terror, to targeted attacks on executives. Currently though, tensions around the US election are high on both ends of the political spectrum. There has been an increase in polarization of political views and even militarization of the public in recent months, and many Signal customers have expressed concern.
For many American’s this is seen as the most important election of their lives so far. Fears of voter fraud and voter suppression are rife, which is reflected by an unprecedented number of early votes being cast with more than 90 million votes already cast a week before the election, more than two-thirds of all the votes cast in 2016.
This, paired with a deadly pandemic and a summer of protests, many of which became violent, and one can see the potential for civil unrest around a contentious presidency. To mitigate this risk organizations need relevant intelligence as events unfold to ensure they take the necessary precautions to protect their employees and assets.
As such, we have created advanced tools to enable Organizations to be alerted as early as possible to issues and current events, such as the Election, where the possible fallout could have an impact on their employees and assets.
Monitoring Election Threats in Real-Time Using Signal OSINT
Using Signal security teams can learn of events as they are happening or even before they happen, allowing effective response plans to be enacted, effectively neutralising potential threats.
To do this users can create custom searches using Boolean Logic to filter intel from key web sources such as social media, the open web, and the dark web. Intel from these sources often acts as an early indicator alerting Signal customer to potential issues in real-time. The data can also be reviewed by our emotional analysis solution for increased data analysis efficiency.
Signal has real-time SMS and email alerting for high-risk threats so that companies can maximise available response time. Once alerted to potential risks the security team can form a final judgement on the threat level and decide whether action needs to be taken.
Final Words on Threat Monitoring with Signal
Threat monitoring isn’t just for events such as a contentious election. COVID-19, earthquakes, storms and other extreme weather events, and even threats of violence against specific executives, can all affect an organization. Signal OSINT software enables security teams to scan a vast number of surface, deep, and dark web channels and sources to gain real-time data on a broad array of emerging threats.
Anonymous social media forums like 4chan or dark web forums are often where threat actors go to communicate and organize. And social media is often where you can learn of current events as they unfold. So whether it’s customer data for sale online, or an active shooter situation in-store, security teams armed with OSINT can quickly assess and respond appropriately to mitigate risks and damages.
Only when an organisation has a complete picture that incorporates the variety of potential risks and has invested in specific responses and contingency plans can it adapt as needed to mitigate the impact of extreme events.
How to tell when negative sentiment becomes a threat to your business
Determining online sentiment doesn't just allow you to understand better how your brand is performing and how people feel about your business though. It can also be used to manage crises and spot potential threats to assets or staff.
Without sentiment analysis, data can be misleading. Sentiment gives data extra context which allows it to be better understood enabling a more effective and accurate response to the potential threat.
There are some 500 million tweets and over 4 million new blogs posted every single day. Each of these sparks another conversation which could house potential threats against an organisation. And we haven’t yet mentioned Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Flickr, Medium or any of the other dozens of social sites and forums where people post online. And if you thought that was a lot of noise you have to remember the dark web too, where many cybercriminals go to engage in nefarious activities with the protection of a Tor browsers anonymity.
The point here is that the internet is full of noise. Monitoring all of that and then cutting through the noise to detect relevant potential threats requires the right tools.
What is Sentiment Analysis?
Determining online sentiment doesn't just allow you to understand better how your brand is performing and how people feel about your business. It can also be used to manage crises and spot potential threats to assets or staff.
Without sentiment analysis, data can be misleading. Sentiment gives data extra context which allows it to be better understood enabling a more effective and accurate response to the potential rtisks.
It also allows you to differentiate between when a negative comment is simply that, a negative comment, or when it needs more serious attention because, for example, it’s evolving into a physical threat.
Where and How do we Measure Sentiment?
Any text that gets highlighted by Signal OSINT software can be run through our sentiment analysis tool, Spotlight. This allows users to reduce the amount of noise and focus on the threats.
Sentiment can be expressed anywhere online, this might be through social media, in the comments of a blog or even in a dark web forum. Signal allows you to gather data from a huge array of open intelligence sources including (but not limited to) social media and dark web forums.
How can Sentiment Analysis Be Used for your Business?
Emerging Threats
Sentiment analysis can be an incredibly useful tool for those that wish to identify potential risks which might evolve into tangible reputational or physical threats against, employees, executives, brand or assets.
Managing Reputation
Your brand’s health and reputation are important. Having a tool that allows you to analyse the overall sentiment towards your brand and associated keywords gives organisations a bigger and better overall picture of their brand which can be a game-changer for launches of major events or analysing the success of a large marketing campaign.
Evolving Crises
When it comes to dealing with current and evolving crises having up to date and detailed situational awareness, gained through an OSINT tool such as Signal can make a huge difference. However, as we have mentioned before, there is a huge amount of noise out there. So, how do you determine which comments, which posts are relevant and need monitoring?
The answer is to use Signal to create specific filters and then run identified posts through our sentiment analysis tool “Spotlight”. This allows users to both quickly identify emerging threats and to then stay on top of these risks as they are evolving in real time.
Moving Your Marketing Forward
Social sentiment is a powerful tool for understanding the relationship between your brand, your customers, and your competitors. If you measure it regularly and act on what you learn, your team can create targeted marketing strategies to keep up with the ever-changing demands and opinions of your customers.
How do you determine when Negative Sentiment Becomes a Threat?
One of the key methods used by our software and our analysis team to tell whether or not a comment is a threat that needs more attention is the repetition of negative sentiment online by an individual or group.
For example:
Does a particular author of a comment or post have a long history of bad-mouthing an organisation or expressing negative sentiment?
Have they repeated the same negativity on multiple sources?
Even if they aren’t directly threatening any physical or tangible action against the organisation, if there’s enough online commentary from a single individual or group then this could escalate and it may be smart to further monitor.
You can then set up a search using our filters to target this individual or group so that you don’t miss if this negative sentiment becomes a physical or reputational threat.
Secondly, using Spotlight, users can identify posts expressing dangerous emotions such as anger, or disappointment. Both if repeated enough should be addressed. Posts expressing anger are likely to indicate a physical threat and should be monitored for that, whilst the posts expressing disappointment may hold reputational risks.
Summary
Sentiment analysis tools like Signal’s Spotlight can help security teams form a broader and more detailed overview of the situation to better understand the potential and emerging threats. It allows them to target their online searches and cut through the noise to identify key threats. All of this essentially means a more efficient and more effective security team.
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Critical Security Intelligence for the Financial Services Sector
Don’t Wait For The News To Tell You About A Threat Outside
Part of Signal’s job is to aggregate online notifications around threats to buildings and the staff inside which affect business and personal safety in various ways. Monitoring online traffic like this can be the fastest way to notify any business of evolving threats.
When Nur Islam became frustrated over a routine withdrawal at a Commonwealth Bank branch in Melbourne on November 18 2016, he poured petrol onto the carpet and set the building on fire, injuring himself and dozens of others.
The $2.5 million building in Springvale was soon destroyed.
Some of the first alerts to Commonwealth Bank’s staff, executives, owners, patrons and passers-by came from social media posts and ‘What we know so far’-style updates from online newspapers, full of urgent bits of information.
Lives were irreversibly changed that day; millions of dollars in insurance had to be paid out; injured staff had to be compensated and healed. Commonwealth Bank also had to protect customers’ sensitive information while ensuring communications around the attack were accurate and helpful.
Get Faster Responses to Developing Danger
Part of Signal’s job is to aggregate online notifications around threats to buildings and the staff inside which affect business and personal safety in various ways.
Signal monitors online traffic, from social media to news to emergency alerts to the dark web, and can be set to notify any business instantly about:
Fire and weather emergencies that might spill over into my building.
Political events happening, from nearby terrorism to far-away occurrences
Issues at airports, from terrorism to flight delays to blizzards
Signal lets users with large assets, distributed workforces and global reach especially large corporations and top banks in Australia, NZ and the US, pre-empt, prevent and develop strategic responses to emerging situations.
Watch The Web and Respond Faster
Signal Open Source Intelligence assists a business’s 'Duty of Care' by:
Letting you be the first to know – saving precious minutes
Covering many platforms – enabling you to monitor local and global events through news, social media and emergency services
Increasing situational awareness by corroborating real-time visual data
Monitoring community chatter and reputation in the incident aftermath
Signal lets you monitor everything affecting your organisation’s real and potential crises, staff safety, supply chain, fraud risks, cyber security and reputation – not to mention threats to your buildings whether from humans or hurricanes.
Signal has a global customer base that includes major corporations across finance, retail, pharmaceutical, and technology industries who utilize Signal to stay aware of potential threats to safety and security.
In Australia and New Zealand, Signal uses heightened situational awareness and real-time intelligence to monitor, gather, and analyse potential risks then make informed decisions to speed incident response time while reducing overhead costs.
Don’t let a failure to watch the web cost your company.