The KeyNorth Group’s Organizational OSINT Maturity Assessment is a tool that will allow you to evaluate how your organization or department has incorporated practices, policies, procedures, and technology to successfully conduct Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) operations. This tool is best suited to law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies, public safety organizations and corporate security groups that use OSINT to achieve their objectives.

This questionnaire can be completed by any person within the agency or organization, engaged in a role that utilizes OSINT.

The results of this assessment are intended to provide feedback on OSINT function by identifying operational strengths and opportunities for improvement. The assessment can be applied to the organization itself, or to a specific department(s). Please be sure to determine your focus prior to starting the survey.

You may complete this assessment as many times as needed. You are encouraged to complete an assessment for each focus as it will provide you with more accurate results.

The tool is intended to provide you with a snapshot view of your current organizational maturity as it relates to OSINT operations. The questions cover five topics, including best practices and capabilities, organizational structure, policy and law, technology, and OSINT training. It will take you approximately 30 minutes to complete the questions and access the feedback. At the end of the survey, you will access your general results which you can print to hard copy or to a PDF document, and keep for your own use.

For each question you will be asked to select “agree” or “disagree”. There may be some instances where the question does not apply to your specific situation. If this is the case, please select “not applicable”.

For questions where a topic does not apply, but you feel it should be addressed (ex. In the case of a deficiency or deficit) please select disagree, rather than “not applicable”. Please note that these answers are given the same grade as an “Agree” answer so that your final score will be more accurate.

Your answers will remain anonymous unless you choose to identify yourself through the contact page at the end of the questionnaire. We do collect anonymized aggregated data to for the purposes of analyzing trends in OSINT.

If you would like an off-line version of the assessment, please contact us and we will send you an electronic file containing the questions, which you can complete off the Internet.

If you have any questions about this assessment or would like to discuss OSINT related management issues, please contact us.

Section A: Best Practices and Capabilities

This section addresses best practices and capabilities which refers to the organization’s ability to conduct OSINT research effectively, support individual researchers, organize information and risk management.

The following questions relate to the organization or department you work for. You should imagine that each question is prefaced with:

“The organization or department I work for…”

Section B: Organizational Structure

This section addresses organizational structure, which refers to the way in which the department, agency or unit is organized to support efficient, effective and risk managed OSINT collection activities over the long term.

The following questions relate to the organization or department you work for. You should imagine that each question is prefaced with:

“The organization or department I work for…”

Section C: Policy and Law

This section assesses whether the organization or unit has mechanisms in place to ensure that OSINT collection is done in accordance with laws applicable in its jurisdiction.

The following questions relate to the organization or department you work for. You should imagine that each question is prefaced with:

“The organization or department I work for…”

Section D: Technology

This section of the assessment is to help participants understand how their organization has invested in technology to support OSINT research, information/evidence management and security.

The following questions relate to the organization or department you work for. You should imagine that each question is prefaced with:

“The organization or department I work for…”

Section E: Training

This section of the assessment is to help participants understand how their organization has invested in training to ensure that the personnel who conduct OSINT activities are appropriately trained for the work they do.

The following questions relate to the organization or department you work for. Unless otherwise specified, you should imagine that each question is prefaced with:

“The organization or department I work for…”

How to Read Your Results

Thank-you for completing the KeyNorth Organizational OSINT Maturity Assessment. Your results will be displayed in the next section.

To read your results, consider that the maturity assessment is a scale between 1% to 100%, where 100% is an organization/department that has invested considerable effort and resources into its OSINT function.

Look for responses with a zero (disagree) in the response. Those are the areas you may wish to give additional consideration to. Please note that the questions you marked as “Not applicable” will show as a correct answer. This is so that your overall answer is not artificially low. Notwithstanding you may wish to highlight these areas for future consideration.

This was a summarized assessment and is a tool in our portfolio of assessment tools. If you would like to discuss your results with us or would like to more know about how the KeyNorth Group can support your organization’s OSINT function, please fill out the form below, one of our team members will respond to you shortly.

If you would not like to contact us, please click the Done button, below the contact form.