There are numerous ways to collect information for security analysts from open source to closed source. Open source includes a pool of resources that everyone has access to like social media or websites. This includes the dark web and government bulletins as well as this is still available for everyone to access. There are numerous platforms for open source intelligence like skopenow that finds, links, identifies, maps, and scales all the data automatically. It provides object and behavior recognition, heat mapping and reports, as well as social media analytics realtime and can be integrated into other platforms.
Anything closed is a pool of resources that isn’t available to anyone. These resources usually exists within a company or is provided by a company through paid means like paid feeds or through a partnership that includes shared database. Some information has to be closed, for example, classified military data. The data is closed because unauthorized disclosure will cause impact to an organization. There are databases that requires certain privilege and a need to know to access. Security analysts should know what data they need and where they can get it if needed.
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