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Connecting Threat Intelligence to Decision-Making: How Flashpoint Is Operationalizing Intelligence in 2026

At RSA Conference 2026, Flashpoint introduces new capabilities that enable security teams to move from visibility to defensible action by connecting adversary activity to business priorities, assets, and investigations.

Most organizations are not lacking visibility, but they are drowning in large volumes of information that are difficult to prioritize and even harder to tie back to clear action. In practice, this creates a familiar problem.

They can see what vulnerabilities exist.
They can track threat activity.
They can monitor alerts across their environment.

But the questions they struggle to answer are more important:

Which of these exposures actually matter?
What do we fix first — and why?
How does this activity translate to risk for the business?

As a result, teams fall back on patching cycles, compliance requirements, or best-effort prioritization and are left making decisions based on incomplete context.

This gap between data and decision-making has become one of the most persistent challenges in modern security operations.

At RSA Conference 2026, Flashpoint is sharing how we are addressing this gap directly — connecting adversary activity to assets, investigations, and defined business priorities so teams can make more consistent, defensible decisions.

“The industry has reached a tipping point where security teams are drowning in data that fails to align with their most important business requirements and decisions. Visibility alone is no longer a victory; it’s a baseline. By connecting underground adversary activity to an organization’s specific attack surface and strategic requirements, Flashpoint is raising the bar beyond passive observation. We are enabling defenders to stop asking ‘what do we own’ and start answering ‘what do we fix first, and why,’ turning raw data into an engine for risk reduction at speed.”

Josh Lefkowitz

What Flashpoint is Showcasing at RSA Conference 2026

Flashpoint is introducing a set of capabilities designed to connect threat intelligence directly to business risk, assets, and investigations:

• Threat-informed External Attack Surface Management (EASM)
• Business-Aligned Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs)
• Managed Attribution browser for anonymous investigations

Together, these capabilities enable organizations to move beyond passive monitoring and toward intelligence-driven action.

What Is Threat-Informed External Attack Surface Management (EASM)

Most organizations maintain an inventory of their external assets, but prioritizing them is a persistent challenge. Traditional EASM tools identify what you own but often fail to answer the critical “so what?”. Without contextual risk, prioritization is often driven by static severity scores, patch cycles, or compliance requirements rather than real-world attacker behavior. As a result, teams are left managing stale data through manual CSV uploads and struggling to determine which exposures actually matter.

Flashpoint’s EASM module transforms this stream of exposure data into a prioritized action plan. It continuously discovers a customer’s external attack surface, including domains, subdomains, and IP addresses, and automatically maps this live inventory directly to Flashpoint’s industry-leading vulnerability intelligence.

This allows security teams to:

• Maintain a Dynamic Inventory: Eliminate manual uploads and stale CMDB exports with an always-current map of internet-facing assets.
• Contextualize Risk Immediately: Go beyond simple asset discovery by mapping the specific software running on each asset to known vulnerabilities, including pre-NVD findings.
• Prioritize with Precision: Connect the asset to the actual risk, showing teams not just their external exposure, but where they are truly vulnerable and what needs to be fixed first.

By layering deep vulnerability intelligence onto live asset discovery, Flashpoint enables defenders to move from reactive analysis to proactive, intelligence-driven risk reduction.

Why Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs) Are Foundational

Many intelligence teams operate without a formal structure that defines what their work is intended to support.

In day-to-day operations, this results in:

• Reactive investigation of incoming alerts
• Reporting driven by the availability of information rather than the need
• Difficulty demonstrating how intelligence outputs influence decisions

Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs) are designed to address this, but in many organizations, they are not integrated into operational workflows.

In May, Flashpoint is introducing in-platform Intelligence Requirements to formalize this structure and embed it directly into the way teams work.

Alerts, investigations, and reporting can be tied to defined requirements, allowing teams to:

• Focus on activities that directly align with defined business risk priorities
• Maintain consistency in what is tracked and reported
• Provide a clearer justification for the intelligence work being done

This creates a more structured intelligence program. Instead of producing outputs based on what is observed, teams can align their work to defined objectives and decision-making needs.

Enabling Safe, Scalable Investigations with Managed Attribution

Accessing adversary-controlled environments such as forums, marketplaces, and encrypted platforms is a core part of many intelligence workflows.

However, doing so safely requires careful setup. Analysts typically need to:

• Use isolated infrastructure
• Manage attribution and identity exposure
• Avoid introducing risk to internal systems

This creates operational overhead and can slow down or limit investigation.

The new anonymous browser capability within Flashpoint Managed Attribution is designed to address this by providing a non-persistent, isolated environment for research and immediate triage. This removes setup friction and allows analysts to move immediately from detection, to investigation, to deeper analysis in the same environment.

Analysts can:

• Access underground communities
• Open suspicious links or files
• Engage with threat actors

Without exposing their identity or internal infrastructure.

By removing the need for manual setup, this allows analysts to move directly into investigation while maintaining operational security. 

See it at RSA Conference 2026

Security teams are being asked to do more than identify threats. They are expected to prioritize, act decisively, and justify those decisions.

That becomes difficult when the inputs — vulnerabilities, alerts, threat reporting — are not clearly connected to each other or to the business.

​​Intelligence needs to be tied to assets, aligned to defined priorities, and usable in day-to-day workflows. That’s the focus of Flashpoint’s updates this year.

At RSA Conference 2026, we’ll be walking through how this works in practice—how teams are connecting adversary activity to what they own, what matters, and what they do next. Flashpoint will be sharing more on these new innovations, including threat-informed EASM, in-platform Intelligence Requirements, and the Managed Attribution browser.If you’re attending, stop by Booth S-3341 to see how teams are moving from visibility to action. For a personalized demo, schedule a meeting with us.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Flashpoint showcasing at RSA 2026? 

Flashpoint is showcasing how its primary-source threat data connects directly to business assets and priorities. At the booth, attendees can get a sneak peek of the upcoming in-platform Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs), which formalize how security teams tie investigations to business risk. Flashpoint will also be discussing the upcoming general availability of threat-informed EASM for asset discovery and risk prioritization, alongside the Flashpoint Managed Attribution browser, designed for secure underground research.

What is Flashpoint Threat-Informed EASM? 

Flashpoint External Attack Surface Management (EASM) goes beyond simple asset discovery by automatically mapping your external footprint to our industry-leading vulnerability intelligence. This allows teams to prioritize remediation by identifying which software versions are actually running on key assets, flagging critical risks often missed by public databases.

How do Flashpoint Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs) help security teams? 

Flashpoint PIRs provide a formal in-platform structure that ties security alerts and investigations to specific business risks. This helps teams move away from reactive “activity-based” work and toward “decision-based” intelligence that is defensible to executive stakeholders.

What are the benefits of the Flashpoint Managed Attribution browser? 

The Flashpoint Managed Attribution browser allows threat analysts to safely research the web using a disposable, anonymous environment. This prevents the analyst’s identity from being exposed and protects the corporate network from malware while conducting underground research.

How does Flashpoint’s new offering support a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework?

Flashpoint facilitates the CTEM lifecycle by providing the primary source data necessary to move beyond traditional point-in-time scanning. EASM enables organizations to start focusing on the specific vulnerable software and high-risk exposures that threat actors are actively targeting.

Begin your free trial today.

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G2 Recognizes Flashpoint as High-Performing ‘Leader’ in Enterprise Threat Intelligence

Breaking down Flashpoint’s rankings in G2’s 2023 fall reports, including customer testimonials

Flashpoint has earned multiple trust badges from G2’s Fall 2023 Reports, affirming our unwavering commitment to delivering timely, contextual intelligence to our clients so they can take rapid, decisive action to stop threats and reduce risk. Here are some highlights from G2’s reports.

‘Leader’ and ‘High Performer’

G2 awarded Flashpoint a “Leader Badge”—ranking us #1 in the Enterprise Americas Regional Grid for Threat Intelligence. Specifically, customers highlighted the value of Flashpoint’s finished intelligence reports, with 98 percent of customers emphasizing its utility.

‘The Platform itself is a great tool’

—CTI analyst on Ignite

94% ‘Likely to Recommend’

In G2’s Enterprise Relationship Index for Threat Intelligence, Flashpoint has the highest score for “Most Likely to Recommend,” with 94 percent of surveyed customers endorsing Flashpoint as an intelligence partner. 

Flashpoint also exceeded the index’s performance averages in all categories, including “Ease of Doing Business With” and “Quality of Support.” 

‘Flashpoint has been a great partner of ours for many years, and the trust we’ve built with their team of managers and analysts is excellent.‘

—Fraud Intelligence Lead, Fortune 500 Technology Company

Related reading: Flashpoint a Strong Performer in External Threat Intelligence Forrester Wave

Leader in Dark Web Monitoring

In G2’s Americas Regional Grid® Report, 99 percent of surveyed customers highlighted Flashpoint’s dark web monitoring capabilities.

Additionally, 90 percent of customers emphasized Flashpoint’s ticketing and RFI services, showcasing our commitment to the intersections between data, intelligence, and professional services support. 

‘Flashpoint offers the greatest amount of data regarding the criminal underground in relation to their peers. The data is well sorted, well presented, and easy to search.‘

— SVP, DFIR Investigations, Public Sector

‘An Excellent Intelligence Tool’

Hear from our customers by reading Flashpoint review on G2, or sign up for a free trial today to see how “great” threat intelligence can help your organization reduce risk and mitigate threats.

Request a demo today.

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The Flashpoint Firehose: 5 Questions With Michael Raypold, VP of Engineering

We sit down for a Q&A with Michael Raypold to discuss the launch of the Flashpoint Firehose, our new data-as-a-service solution

1. Tell me about the Flashpoint Firehose. What needs and challenges was it built to address?

Michael Raypold: The Flashpoint Firehose is a data-as-a-service solution that delivers a constant stream of data from various sources, ranging from social media platforms to messaging apps and illicit communities. It also includes numerous sources from APAC, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—all vital data sources that are often underrepresented among other providers.

The Firehose delivers access to all ingested data from Flashpoint’s unique collections that data companies, federal systems integrators (FSIs), and large-scale national security teams need in order to build high-quality data and AI tools to enhance global situational awareness, generate timely intelligence, and advance national security initiatives.

With Firehose access, customers can pull key segments of Flashpoint data into their own infrastructure without needing to query our APIs. This unlocks the ability to train large language models or build machine learning models, enabling product development. This is especially important for many of our OEM partners.

2. Why is Flashpoint especially positioned to offer this type of solution?

Threat actors aren’t constrained by borders, and a diverse data set is imperative for organizations working in the cyber and physical security domains. Because of this, Flashpoint has dedicated the last 13 years to building out its collections capabilities and in-house analyst team to deliver actionable intelligence from a wide range of publicly and commercially available information data sources. As a result, Flashpoint has become the industry leader in delivering solutions for cyber threat intelligence, vulnerability management, physical security intelligence, and national security teams.

3. What are some of the unique capabilities of the Firehose?

The Firehose excels in the following primary categories:

1. Speed: Once the data is ingested by the Flashpoint Firehose, it is delivered to the customer in real-time or near-real-time. This is especially important for customers building products where speed is paramount, such as an alerting dashboard.

2. Data: Flashpoint focuses heavily on the variety, breadth, and depth of its data, which is incredibly important for our customers who require comprehensive coverage of the information landscape.

3. Flexibility: The Firehose is designed to enable users to manipulate the data according to their specific needs.

To ease adoption, Flashpoint has also enriched all of the Firehose content with geospatial inference and language detection, making it easier for users to draw actionable insights and pivot off of Flashpoint’s unique selectors.

4. Tell me more about the ML enrichments.

Once collected and structured, the data undergoes enrichment through named entity recognition and machine learning, providing geospatial insight and language detection, offering customers additional ways to filter and query the data while delivering immediate value. This data can then integrate seamlessly into custom products and be indexed according to the customer’s requirements.

5. As an engineer yourself, what excites you the most about the Firehose?

When building high-quality intelligence products, engineers are often limited by the breadth, depth, and availability of the data they can query or make actionable for their customers. This problem is exacerbated when they have to make API queries to third-party providers. 

The ability to ingest Flashpoint data in real time and have end-to-end control over the storage, enrichment, and querying of that data enables really exciting product opportunities. The Firehose allows engineers to ingest data into their own infrastructure and enable a crisper product experience.

The ability to build a notification or alerting pipeline off of a data stream is one possibility that’s unlocked with a Firehose versus a REST API. Others will find that the Firehose is uniquely positioned for anomaly detection, dashboarding, data visualization, training large language models, or extending internal and proprietary data sets to craft a truly differentiated experience.

We’re innovating entirely with our partners in mind, to fulfill their data requirements. The Flashpoint Firehose was built to serve as a force multiplier for their data-driven products, enabling them to realize their visions and value faster.

Learn more about the Flashpoint Firehose here.

Request a demo today.

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Lessons From Clop: Combating Ransomware and Cyber Extortion Events

Recent attacks from Clop emphasize the importance of implementing an organization-wide ransomware and cyber extortion strategy, from preparedness to detection and isolation

Lessons from Clop

It’s been one month since the Clop ransomware group began exploiting the MOVEit vulnerability (CVE-2023-34362 (VulnDB ID: 322555) to claim nearly 100 victims across the globe, many of which have come public. This attack comes on the heels of Clop leveraging the GoAnywhere MFT vulnerability (CVE-2023-0669), which led them to claim they’d illegally obtained information for more than 100 companies.

When a ransomware or cyber extortion event occurs, security teams are racing against the clock:

• What do we know about the cybercriminal group that’s claiming responsibility for an attack or double extortion?
• Is our organization affected? If so, what is the extent of the breach and its impact on our systems, networks, people, and data?
• How do we respond to and mitigate the situation?

These questions are of vital importance to organizations across the public and private sectors. And the recent Clop attacks—which affected organizations across the globe in nearly every vertical—are yet another example of why it’s vital to have proactive defense measures in place.

Targeting upstream data providers

First, it’s vital to have a deep understanding of the adversary, such as a RaaS (ransomware-as-a-service) group like Clop. Here are five ways that ransomware groups like Clop attack targets, as well as the threat vectors they seen to exploit:

1. Supply chain attacks. As illustrated through MOVEit, Clop often targets upstream software vendors or service providers so that it can cast a wide net. A number of the known Clop victims are companies who were attacked via a third-party vendor. Attackers like Clop may exploit vulnerabilities in the communication or data exchange between these companies, or compromise the software or hardware components supplied by third-party providers to inject malicious code or backdoors.
2. Cloud Service Providers (CSP). If a cloud service provider experiences a security breach, it can potentially impact third parties that utilize their cloud services in several ways. Clop successfully breached a cloud service provider, giving them potential access to highly sensitive information.
3. Managed Service Providers (MSPs), who inherently have access to clients’ IT infrastructure, are also a lucrative target for ransomware groups like Clop as they service a multitude of businesses. 
4. Software vulnerabilities are common, as ransomware groups often exploit known vulnerabilities in widely used software. Here, Clop exploited MOVEit, a file transfer software used by organizations globally, to install a malicious web shell called LEMURLOOT.
5. Zero-days. Ransomware groups may also exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, or previously unknown security flaws, in software leveraged by a wide range of organizations.  

Putting vulnerabilities into context

CLOP’s use of the MOVEit and GoAnywhere MFT vulnerabilities provide us with two recent high-profile examples of the power and impact of the group’s attacks—as well as the damage they can have on victims. 

It also shines a bright light onto the level of information and context that CTI analysts and vulnerability management teams require in order to better prioritize and take action on the vulnerabilities likely to be used in ransomware and other attacks. 

Tools such as Flashpoint’s VulnDB can unpack vulnerabilities like MOVEit in order to provide practitioners with access to real-time, comprehensive information so that they can understand the scope of the incident and develop effective response strategies to make faster, informed decisions and mitigate the attack. 

This includes information about 300,000 vulnerabilities, including thousands not listed in the public source, as well as robust metadata and numerous prioritization and prediction metrics, including:

• a CVSS score
• social risk score
• EPSS score
• ransomware likelihood score
• supplemental information on which versions of software may be affected

Furthermore, when equipped with this context, vulnerability practitioners should be able to gain an active understanding of how the software, services, and other third-party assets they use are affected.

Alerting for faster awareness and remediation

Speed is crucial when responding to or setting up defenses for a ransomware or cyber extortion event. In order to stay current on known exploits and better understand potential organization risks, vulnerability managers, analysts, and researchers should be able to set up customizable, automated ransomware alerts of leaked assets as a result of an extortion incident, and gain insight into the extent of exposure and damage. 

The combination of threat intelligence and vulnerability intelligence is a powerful weapon against adversaries. For instance, when a ransomware event occurs, vulnerability practitioners should be able to easily raise their awareness levels by using a robust alerting system. From there, they can quickly drill down into supplemental information to identify if exploits are being shared, see which threat actors are discussing the vulnerability across all illicit and open-source communities (forums, chats, ransomware sites, paste sites, blogs, social media, e.g.), and better assess the risk.

Understanding incidents as they unfold

Gaining continuous intelligence and context on ransomware attacks is vital throughout an attack, which often extends for weeks in the public sphere (and undoubtedly longer behind closed doors). It is therefore important to ensure that your organization is being provided with an active understanding of the situation as it unfolds in real-time—beyond vulnerability intelligence.

Flashpoint’s Intelligence Team, for example, delivers to customers incident pages and regular updates that communicate the most important details of an extortion event in progress. This includes background and assessments of the vulnerability, status updates with timelines, known victims, change logs, and intelligence that contributes to a more holistic understanding of a risk and informs decision-making.

Managed attribution for investigations

A managed attribution solution allows intelligence teams to shift from defense to offense by enabling security teams to safely and anonymously conduct investigations. Analysts will often access or download files from a ransomware blog to verify if their organization was impacted in the incident. While doing so, it’s vital to protect and keep your organization safe via a secure research environment that is isolated from analyst browsers, computers and network infrastructure. Flashpoint’s Managed Attribution solution allows security teams to interact with files, conduct online investigations, and browse safely without risk to their organization.   

Ransomware response and readiness

To quickly assess, contain, and mitigate the impact of such incidents, it is crucial for organizations to have robust risk management practices in place. This includes conducting thorough due diligence when selecting third-party vendors, assessing their security practices, actively monitoring their security posture, and implementing contractual obligations and security controls to protect the company’s interests. 

Additionally, it’s crucial to have incident response plans in place in order to respond effectively and recover from security breaches.In the event that an organization is impacted by ransomware, having a well-practiced incident response plan can greatly minimize damages. This includes: 

• Creating an Incident Response playbook
• Holding mandatory training sessions for employees
• Enabling staff members to proactively thwart attacks

Ransomware and cyber extortion events are undoubtedly stressful and challenging, but there are practical and proven ways to lessen that burden to reduce risk across your organization. To learn more about how Flashpoint empowers security teams to prevent and respond to ransomware attacks, contact us, sign up for a free trial, or watch this video to understand the top ways to prevent a ransomware attack at your organization.

Request a demo today.

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How to Combat Check Fraud: Leveraging Intelligence to Prevent Financial Loss

Criminals increasingly steal checks and sell them on illicit online marketplaces, where check fraud-related services are common. Intelligence is helping the financial sector fight back

Stolen checks and the impact of Covid-19

Checks are one of the most vulnerable legacy payment methods. Check fraud can actively affect the bottom lines (and reputations) of banks, financial services organizations, government entities, and many other organizations that utilize checks. According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), fraud—including check fraud—is “the largest source of illicit proceeds in the US” as well as “one of the most significant money laundering threats to the United States.” 

Targeting the mail

Criminals target the US mail system to steal a variety of checks. In fact, there is a nationwide surge in check fraud schemes targeting the US mail and shipping system, as threat actors continue to steal, alter, and sell checks through illicit means and channels. 

This includes personal checks and tax refund checks to government or government assistance-related checks (Social Security payments, e.g.). Business checks are also a primary target because they are often written for larger amounts and may take longer for the victim to identify fraudulent activity.

In 2022 alone, US banks filed 680,000 check fraud-related suspicious activity reports (SARs). This represents a nearly two-fold increase from 2021 (which itself represents a 23 percent YoY increase from 2020). This surge in check fraud has been exacerbated by Covid-19 Economic Impact Payments (EIPs) under the CARES Act, which presented threat actors with a new avenue to attempt to commit fraud.

Check fraud: A mini use case 

In order to mitigate and ultimately prevent check-fraud-related risks, it’s crucial for financial intelligence and fraud teams to understand what threat actors seek, how they work, and where they operate. 

This begins, as we detail below, with intelligence into the communities, forums, and marketplaces where check fraud occurs as well as the tools that enable deep understandings, timely insights, and measurable action. 

Below is an intelligence narrative, in three acts, that tells the story of how transactions involving some of the above examples could play out.

Act I: Obtain

Threat actors are known to remove mail from individuals’ mailboxes and parcel lockers using blue box “arrow” master keys. These arrow keys are often stolen from USPS employees, which has led to numerous incidents of harassment, threats, and even violence. Generally, arrow keys are sold within illicit community chats and/or the deep and dark web, often fetching upwards of $3,000 per key.

In general, when it comes to check fraud, threat actors may sell or seek: 

• Mailbox keys
• Stolen checks
• Check alteration services (physical and digital)
• Synthetic identity provisioning
• Drop account sharing
• Counterfeit check creation
• Writing a check with insufficient funds behind it
• Insider access

Act II: Alter

Check alteration comes in two forms: “washing” and “cooking.” 

Washing refers to the process of altering a check by chemically removing ink and replacing the newly empty spaces with a different value, recipient name, or another fraud-enabling alteration. 

Cooking involves digitally scanning the check and altering text or values through digital means.

Act III: Monetize

Threat actors will deposit the fraudulent check and rapidly withdraw the funds from an ATM, or sell a stolen or altered check on an illicit marketplace or chat group, and then receive payment, often via cryptocurrency.

Four key elements of actionable check fraud intelligence

Financial institutions should rely on four essential intelligence-led technologies, tools, or capabilities to effectively combat check fraud.

1) Visibility and access to illicit communities and channels

To prevent check fraud, organizations should focus on a few key places. Financially motivated threat actors operate and share information on messaging apps like Telegram and other open-source channels, as well as illicit marketplaces on the deep and dark web. Therefore, it is imperative for financial intelligence and fraud teams to have access to the most relevant check fraud-related threats across the internet. 

Keep in mind, however, that accessing these communities is not always straightforward and, if done frivolously, can compromise an investigation.

2) Timeliness and curated alerting

Intelligence is often only as good as it is relevant. Flashpoint enables security and intelligence practitioners to bubble the most important, mission-critical intelligence through our real-time alerting capability, which allows users to receive notifications for keywords and phrases that relate to their mission, such as check fraud-related lingo and activity. 

In addition to real-time alerts, analysts can rely on curated alerting and saved searches to track topics of long-term interest. Flashpoint Ignite enables analysts to research particular accounts and their recent activity and matches transactions to their respective ATM slips and institution address. This helps to ensure the accuracy of the information found within these communities and marketplaces before raising any alarms, as many scammers post false content. 

This approach is particularly valuable as check fraudsters often share crucial information such as preferred methodologies, social media handles, and geolocations that can aid in identifying malicious activities. In addition, by closely observing newly emerging trends, such as the evolution of pandemic relief fraud to refund fraud to check fraud, analysts can proactively develop robust preventative measures to mitigate risks before these tactics become widespread.

3) Actionable OCR and Video Search

In order to provide “material proof,” cyber threat actors will often tout and post an image of a check in a chat application or marketplace in hopes of increasing the likelihood of a successful transaction. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology can capture important information about check fraud attempts, since actors often share images of the fraudulent check or subsequent monetization transactions. OCR alerts are customizable with the financial institution’s name and common phrases used on checks to enhance accuracy.

Images of fraudulent checks provide valuable insights into the fraud attempt, including the check’s unique identifier, the account holder’s name, the bank’s name and address, and the endorsement signature. By analyzing these details, financial institutions and law enforcement agencies can identify patterns and leads that can help them track down the perpetrators and prevent future fraudulent activity.

Moreover, ATM withdrawal slips can offer critical information about the transaction, such as the location of the ATM, the time of the deposit, and the type of account used. This data is useful when taking appropriate measures to prevent similar attempts and protect customers’ assets. With the help of advanced technologies like Flashpoint’s OCR, institutions can quickly extract and analyze this information to generate real-time alerts and take prompt action to prevent monetary losses.

An essential investigative component, Flashpoint’s industry-first video search technology, like its OCR capability, enables fraud and cyber threat intelligence (CTI) teams to surface logos, text, explicit content, and other critical intelligence to enhance investigations.

Combat check fraud with Flashpoint

Flashpoint delivers the intelligence that enables financial institutions to combat check fraud at scale. With timely, actionable, and accurate intelligence, financial institutions can mitigate and prevent financial loss, protect customer assets, and track down perpetrators. Get a free trial today to learn how:

• A financial services customer detected more than $4M in illicitly marketed assets, including checks and compromised accounts, using Flashpoint’s OCR capabilities. 

• A customer received 125 actionable alerts in a single month equated to over $15M in potentially averted losses.

• An automated alert enabled a customer to identify a threat actor’s specific operations, saving them over $5M.

Request a demo today.

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Beyond Gates and Alarms: The Scope and Impact of Physical Security Intelligence

Exploring the role of physical security intelligence, which helps governments and commercial enterprises keep people, places, and assets safe

What is Physical Security Intelligence?

When most people think of physical security, they often think about access control measures or physical security systems. These include gates, alarms, surveillance cameras, and security guards. These measures are fundamental to protecting facilities, as well as the people, assets, and infrastructure inside of them. However, these measures fail to address several external factors. These factors include the impact of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and insider threats on physical security.

Why is Physical Security Intelligence Important?

That is where physical security intelligence comes into play. Physical security intelligence delivers mission-critical insights into real-time situations occurring globally. It empowers governments and commercial enterprises to safeguard, defend, and enhance the security of individuals, locations, and physical assets.

Physical security intelligence is built on external information. This includes social media and other online channels. It provides situational awareness and insights into potential physical security threats in their earliest stages.

Where Physical and Cyber Threat Intelligence Collide

Cyber and physical threats are increasingly related. In fact, most attacks on people, places, and infrastructure involve some degree of online communication. Real-world events are often enabled or bolstered by cyber-related activities. An example is when a threat actor uses an online discussion forum or social media network to plan a physical attack.

Decentralized open-source channels like Telegram have become an increasingly popular medium for both cyber and physical threat actors. These channels have eroded long-standing barriers to entry to the deep and dark web. When that communication takes place in publicly available channels, security teams can use that information to investigate the incident. Ideally, they can be alerted to early warning indicators and prevent it altogether.

The Impact of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Physical security intelligence reduces information gaps and leads to more proactive physical security. Open-source intelligence is a critical resource for these applications.

OSINT involves gathering and analyzing publicly available information to derive meaningful insights. In recent years, OSINT has become one of the most relied-upon forms of intelligence for the US government. Its abundance and low barrier to entry make OSINT increasingly useful for commercial enterprises as well.

Thanks to the smartphone, open sources like social media often provide the most up-to-the-minute information about breaking events. Tapping into this data gives security and intelligence teams the real-time information necessary for addressing immediate crises and generating timely intelligence. OSINT provides incredible value for both public and private sector teams. This is true as long as they have the tools and capabilities to gather and analyze the abundance of information effectively.

Examples of Physical Security Intelligence Use Cases

How understanding physical risk can enable corporate physical security teams and public sector organizations to address a wide range of challenges.

Global Situational Awareness

Open-source data can improve situational awareness. It does this by providing insight related to geopolitics, public sentiment, technology developments, and on-the-ground activities in areas of interest. This is especially true when that data is enriched with geospatial information. This information includes where the posts originated, or what locations were mentioned within the post contents and metadata.

Crisis Response

Open-source data provides real-time information for events like natural disasters, public health crises, and terrorist attacks. This information helps security teams stay alert to breaking events, assess impacts, and respond appropriately.

Executive Protection and Force Protection 

Across the public and private sectors, threats to personnel come from all directions. This ranges from unforeseen travel risks to doxing and reputational risks, such as bad press. Leveraging OSINT is crucial for surfacing this information and reducing blind spots. It is a strategic complement to traditional executive protection methods like bodyguards and security cameras.

Flashpoint Ignite equips physical security teams with real-time access to the most extensive breadth of open-source information available.

Persistent Threat Analysis

Persistent security concerns like terrorism rely on social media and other online channels to spread. OSINT helps physical security and intelligence teams monitor evolving web-based chatter to improve visibility and defend against those threats.

Insider Threats

Social dissent, burnout, and various other factors have dramatically shifted the insider threat landscape. Disgruntled employees may take action against organizations. This could include disclosing confidential data or disrupting business operations. They often discuss these topics online before taking action. Government, healthcare, big tech, and media are especially vulnerable.

Physical Attacks

Social media and discussion websites are often used to share violent intent and plan events. For example, the Capitol Hill insurrection was planned online for weeks prior to the attack. Bad actors tend to be more candid in online settings. This is because their identity is anonymous, and they are engaging with like-minded communities.

Supply Chain Disruptions

Disruptions like natural disasters or geopolitical conflicts can halt or delay the flow of goods along the supply chain. Monitoring open sources for these disruptions can provide early warning indicators. It can also help you assess if your organization will be impacted down the line.

Event Monitoring

It is vital to have the right physical security intelligence protocols in place. This ensures the security of an event and its attendees. Physical security intelligence can augment an organization’s overall security and intelligence operations during an event. This could be a high-profile conference with global attendees or a smaller affair. Physical security intelligence can include pre-event assessments, daily stand-ups, and monitoring and alerting of imminent and potential threats. Protecting a location—and the people around it—is also essential to strengthening brand reputation

Flashpoint Ignite for Physical Security Teams

Flashpoint’s Physical Security Intelligence (PSI) solution is part of the Ignite platform. It gathers open-source data from a variety of online spaces. These range from mainstream social media, discussion forums, fringe networks, messaging apps, and regional sources from around the world. The solution is fast and intuitive. It allows users to search, filter, monitor, and analyze the data in a customizable dashboard. User-generated alerts ensure that the right team gets notified if new, relevant content is detected. Enrichments like geolocation, language detection, and threat detection provide valuable context to the information discovered.

Request a demo today.

Request a demo today.

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Why We Built Flashpoint Ignite: Unity, Power, and Performance

Flashpoint’s Chief Product and Engineering Officer, Patrick Gardner, introduces Flashpoint Ignite—our new platform to accelerate cross-functional threat detection and risk mitigation for CTI, Vulnerability, National Security, and Physical Security teams

Flashpoint has long been known for its industry-leading data collection and finished intelligence. After two major acquisitions in 2022, we have powerful far-reaching visibility with more technology than ever, which presents us with an amazing challenge—how do we put these components together in a way that unlocks even more value for our customers?

Our answer: Ignite—Flashpoint’s brand new, team-tailored, lightning-fast intelligence platform.

What is the Flashpoint Ignite Intelligence Platform?

The Flashpoint Ignite platform is a technology ecosystem that delivers tailored intelligence across multiple security functions in a combined workspace. It enables security teams to connect and remediate risk faster with access to Flashpoint’s extensive intelligence, along with analytical tools to rapidly find relevant data as well as the ability to request custom intelligence support in just a few clicks. 

Ignite is the home of our new Cyber Threat Intelligence, Physical Security Intelligence, Vulnerability Management, and National Security Intelligence solutions, and it provides a unified experience across the organization. With a holistic view of risk in one place, security and intelligence practitioners can finally close the gap between data, intelligence, and action.

“In an overwhelming information landscape, we are doing everything possible to make our customers’ jobs easier.”

Patrick Gardner

Why Did We Build the Flashpoint Ignite Platform?

When I joined Flashpoint in September 2022, I felt like a kid in a candy store. We have an incredible amount of information and capabilities. Our strategy is to make it easy and fast to surface that value for our customers to tackle various challenges. We built Ignite to support this goal and to help our customers solve their challenges more effectively. 

The main pillars we aim to address with the Flashpoint Ignite platform are:

• Improving user experience by making it intuitive, faster, customizable, and easier to find relevant information.

• Incorporating custom intelligence requests into the platform to allow users to manage and track their reports in a single unified location.

• Integrating all of our data so users can see threats end-to-end.

Key Ignite Features

Each solution under the Ignite platform has its own set of powerful features specially designed to support different teams’ intel missions, each of which contribute to an organization’s overarching security objective to protect assets, infrastructure, and stakeholders from cyber and physical threats. 

The real power of Ignite is how we bring these capabilities together with common features across all solutions:

• Universal Search: Ignite allows users to easily and quickly navigate through the vast landscape of collections and intelligence to find the information they need across text, video, conversations, and images with a single search across all data.  
• Alerting: Ignite enables users to create intuitive and highly customizable alerts directly from their searches to inform them when pertinent information is uncovered.
• Reports: Ignite helps teams inform decision-making and prioritize efforts to protect their organizations with a sleek news-style finished intelligence experience that makes it easy to find the content most relevant to your organization’s risk profile and mitigation strategy.

How Ignite Powers Results

In an overwhelming information landscape, we are doing everything possible to make our customers’ jobs easier. These are the main outcomes we aim to deliver with Ignite: 

Enabling teams to achieve more with an integrated Flashpoint experience

• Ignite delivers a range of solutions to support various security teams while providing the extensibility to integrate and interoperate with other solutions. Teams can easily obtain the information they need to move information forward and remediate risk faster. 

Providing dependable intelligence for everyone

• We gather data from all different corners of the internet, cut through the noise, and find the answers our customers need to do their jobs faster. Whether they need visibility into the deep and dark web, OSINT/surface web, vulnerabilities, breach data, or geospatial intelligence–our finished intelligence reports and raw collections are right at our users’ fingertips.

Closing the gap between data, intelligence, and action

• Users can quickly assess their data across all products, streamline workflows, adapt, and take decisive action. Ignite connects multiple tools, so whether our customers are deep in investigative work or consuming reports to stay on top of trends, they can stay ahead of the changing threat landscape.

What’s Next?

With all the strengths Flashpoint has, there’s so much opportunity and we’ve only scratched the surface. Ignite provides a highly flexible and robust technology layer for us to build lightning-fast, easily searchable solutions for teams across the security organization. 

In the future, customers can expect better integrations, more powerful enrichments, increased data correlation, new visualizations, and more relevant information automatically recommended through situational awareness, alleviating the need to spend excess time and resources seeking it out.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Flashpoint Ignite and why should my organization use it?

Flashpoint Ignite is a unified intelligence platform that brings together cyber threat intelligence, physical security, vulnerability management, and national security data into one workspace. Your organization should use it to eliminate data silos and accelerate the time it takes to detect and remediate risks. By consolidating all of Flashpoint’s industry-leading data into a single, lightning-fast ecosystem, Ignite allows your teams to see threats from end to end.

Flashpoint Ignite Solution	Team Benefit
Cyber Threat Intelligence	Accelerates investigations into dark web actors and malware.
Physical Security Intelligence	Provides situational awareness for executives and global facilities.
Vulnerability Management	Prioritizes patching based on real-world exploitability data.

How does Flashpoint Universal Search improve analyst efficiency?

Flashpoint Universal Search improves efficiency by allowing analysts to query the platform’s vast collections of text, video, images, and technical data with a single search. Instead of toggling between different tools or datasets, Universal Search within Flashpoint Ignite surfaces all relevant information instantly. This “one-stop” search capability acts as a force multiplier, giving analysts back the time and energy they used to spend on manual data aggregation.

• Unified Results: See dark web chatter, technical indicators, and media in one view.
• Format Flexibility: Search for keywords within videos and images using OCR and logo detection.
• Speed-to-Insight: Reduces the steps required to validate a threat and move toward action.

Why is the unified experience in Flashpoint Ignite better than using separate tools?

The unified experience in Flashpoint Ignite is better because it closes the dangerous gap between data, intelligence, and action. Using separate tools often leads to missed correlations and slower response times. In Flashpoint Ignite, security and intelligence practitioners can view cyber and physical risks side-by-side, ensuring that every decision is backed by a holistic understanding of the organization’s risk profile.

Traditional Multi-Tool Approach	Flashpoint Ignite Unified Experience
Fragmented Data	Fully integrated data across all security functions.
Slower Triage	Accelerated remediation through cross-functional workflows.
Higher Complexity	Simplified news-style reporting and intuitive custom alerts.

Request a demo today.