OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) is a type of threat intelligence focused on collecting and analyzing publicly available data to identify potential threats to your organization. This includes monitoring various public sources where sensitive company data may be leaked. Sources often include hacker forums, paste sites, criminal marketplaces, Telegram channels, Discord Channels, and third-party breaches.
For organizations, OSINT monitoring serves as an essential early warning system by continuously scanning the public internet. Traditionally, OSINT focuses on exposed corporate data, including employee credentials, leaked session tokens, internal documents, internet chatter, threat actors discussing your organization, and Initial Access Brokers (IABs) selling access. OSINT is particularly important as organizations increasingly use cloud services and collaborative tools. Misconfigurations or human error can accidentally expose sensitive data, making it publicly available. By monitoring OSINT, you can quickly identify and remediate leaked data before it can be exploited. OSINT helps protect your organization from data breaches, account takeovers, and reputational damage by providing visibility into your organization’s external exposure from an attacker’s perspective.
Open Source Intelligence
Leverage publicly available information to stop attacks
Track hacker forums, Telegram channels, criminal marketplaces, phishing attempts, and dark web platforms for mentions of or plans targeting your organization.
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What is OSINT?
Early data breach detection
Get alerts when your data is exposed. The sooner security teams are notified, the faster they can remediate the risk.
Stop Initial Access Brokers
Initial Access Brokers are one of the main drivers behind ransomware attacks. Reset leaked credentials before they’re exploited.
Prevent phishing attacks
Identify and take down malicious domains mimicking your organization before they’re used to steal your customers’ or employees’ credentials.
OSINT Monitoring Platform Trusted by Security Teams Worldwide
Our team uses Breachsense data to gain initial access during pen testing and red team engagements. The API is simple to use and the support is always helpful and responds quickly.
Gordon Maddern
Technical Director, Red Cursor
Our Security Colony platform relies on Breachsense data as part of our dark web monitoring service. The data is continuously updated and high quality. Highly recommend!
Nick Ellsmore
SVP Professional Services, Trustwave
We rely on Breachsense for a lot of data. Their frequent database updates, constant availability, and handling of big and small breaches alike means we are always covered.
Bill Mathews
CTO, Hurricane Labs
Frequently Asked Questions
OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence. According to the U.S. Intelligence Community, it’s intelligence derived exclusively from publicly or commercially available information. For organizations, cyber threat intelligence platforms use OSINT to monitor hacker forums, paste sites, social media, code repositories, and dark web sources for exposed credentials, internal documents, or discussions about planned attacks targeting your company.
Yes, OSINT monitoring is completely legal when conducted properly. As confirmed by the NIH, OSINT only involves collecting and analyzing publicly available information that anyone could access through legal means. This includes public websites, forums, social media, and data breach collections. It’s fundamentally different from hacking, unauthorized access, or other illegal methods. Organizations use OSINT to protect themselves by monitoring for compromised credentials and leaked company data before attackers exploit them.
No, OSINT goes far beyond Google searches. While search engines are one OSINT tool, comprehensive OSINT monitoring requires specialized tools and techniques to access sources that Google can’t index. This includes monitoring private hacker forums, threat actor channels on Telegram and Discord, criminal marketplaces, paste sites, code repositories, and dark web platforms. Security teams need continuous automated monitoring across these diverse sources to detect threats in real time.
ChatGPT and similar AI tools can assist with certain OSINT tasks like analyzing text, summarizing findings, or generating search queries. However, ChatGPT cannot directly access real-time dark web marketplaces, private hacker forums, or continuously monitor for new data breaches. Effective OSINT requires specialized threat intelligence platforms that actively crawl and monitor sources where stolen data appears. The platforms then alert security teams when their organization’s data is exposed.
AI will enhance OSINT but not replace it. AI excels at analyzing large volumes of data, identifying patterns, and prioritizing threats. However, the collection aspect of OSINT still requires specialized infrastructure to access and monitor thousands of sources continuously. The future of OSINT combines AI-powered analysis with human expertise for threat intelligence. Security teams will use AI to process OSINT data faster and more accurately, but human analysts remain essential for decision-making and contextual understanding.
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