OSINT: Advanced Web Monitoring and Automation

Open enrolment and in-house options available

To be effective, OSINT should allow as much time as possible for reading, analysis, insight generation and reporting. To this end, practitioners should know how to simplify or automate routine workflows, particularly those that support the rest of the intelligence value chain. They should also know how to leverage an extended range of sources, including those in foreign languages. This course builds on our OSINT: Foundations program to help you accelerate the collection and processing of information. We will also show you how to use standard office productivity tools to automate data processing and support collation, analysis and reporting.

There are currently no dates planned for this course. Register your interest for future dates or enquire about in-house options.

Course Outline

Source Discovery and Feed Generation

Working with OSINT Sources

  • Defining your “topic ecologies”
  • Expanding your source base
  • Going beyond "traditional" OSINT sources
  • Building and maintaining a source directory
  • Validating OSINT sources

Advanced Feed Discovery

  • Prepping the browser for feed discovery
  • Feed discovery strategies
  • Feed discovery tools
  • Working with URL conventions
  • Automating feed / source discovery

Generating Feeds

  • From basic to advanced feed generation tools
  • Working with content selectors
  • Working with HTML code
  • Validating feeds

Advanced Feed Processing and Automating OSINT Workflows

Advanced Feed Processing

  • Mixing feeds
  • Filtering feeds
  • Working with multilingual feeds
  • Feed to newsletter tools

Page Monitoring

  • Page monitoring tools
  • Page monitoring extensions

Workflow and Process Automation

  • Mapping OSINT workflows
  • Automating OSINT workflows
  • Working with workflow automation tools (IFTTT, Zapier, etc.)
There are currently no dates planned for this course. Register your interest for future dates or enquire about in-house options.

Who is this Course For?

This course is designed for OSINT practitioners wishing to improve workflow and process automation. It is also recommended for professionals working in news monitoring, conflict management, crisis response, reputational risks or similar watch keeping roles.

How You Benefit

On completion of this course you will have the ability to:

  • Develop and maintain an extended index of OSINT sources
  • Generate news feeds and alerts en masse, including in foreign languages and from specific locations
  • Separate signal from noise
  • Automatically generate newsletters and e-mail digests on topics of interest
  • Use process automation tools to capture and organise data relevant to your work
  • Use taught tools and techniques to support tasks and processes other than web monitoring

What You Receive

  • A full set of course slides / user guides in PDF
  • Tip sheets and cheat sheets to enable rapid learning
  • An index of recommended workflows and supporting tools
  • Six months of post-course support

Course Prerequisites

We recommend that participants wishing to take our OSINT: Advanced Web Monitoring and Automation course first complete our OSINT: Foundations course.

Course Requirements

Please bring a Windows or Mac laptop (tablets are not recommended for this course). You should install Google’s Chrome browser and set up Google and Twitter accounts to facilitate the use of different tools. You will be required to install a range of browser extensions, so it is important that you have administrative rights to your laptop.