What is Web Intelligence? Defining the Term in Simple Language with Advanced Technology
The simple answer to this broad and complex question is that Web Intelligence, also known as WEBINT, is the processed, relevant and useful form of data collected from the web, analyzed to provide intelligent insights on web activity of online users to businesses, security agencies, financial institutions, government agencies and private sector organizations. In other words, Web Intelligence today means learning critical clues and information from the morsels of golden insights that aid everything from criminal investigation processes, terror prevention, and national security enforcement, to leveraging uptime and business operational productivity, fraud prevention, threat prevention – all through learning about online users' activities on the surface, deep and dark web.
From channels like websites, to forums, blogs, social media and mobile apps, Artificial Intelligence has allowed endless industries and verticals to identify initiators, participants and conspirers in organized illegal activities online, revolutionizing how crime and threats can be deterred – both in regards to response time and methodology.
So, if you ask again, what is Web Intelligence? In advanced technological terms rendered simply, Web Intelligence is the invaluable, irreplaceable, critical data assets acquired through AI-driven software that scans the web and researches activity to extract discernible insights. Two decades ago, technology experts speculated the extent to which Web Intelligence would in fact transform and impact our every day lives. Today it's clear that Artificial Intelligence not only drives leading Web Intelligence solutions but is life-altering and has the ability to change our world for the better, particularly with so much of our society's corrupt communication channeled through the internet.
Let's investigate.
Defining Web Intelligence Then & Now: How WEBINT Serves Today's Society At Large
In the year 2000, the book Web Intelligence was published, edited by Ning Zhong, Jiming Liu, Yiyu Yao, in which a clearly written definition of the concept was generated:
"[...] Web Intelligence (WI) is a new direction for scientific research and development that explores the fundamental roles as well as practical impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced Information Technology (IT) on the next generation of Web-empowered products, systems, services, and activities. It is the key and the most urgent research field of the IT in the era of Web and agent intelligence."
Today, this definition has evolved with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the web's never-ending development of content and communication channels. Leading developers of AI-fueled Web Intelligence solutions that track internet users' activity filter out data that makes noise but offers little music to the ears of those seeking truly useful information. In defining clear parameters within the advanced software's settings, functions, and features, users can now scour the web's content to acquire vital tidbits of information that can prevent national and international security fiascos, civil uprising, catastrophes, and various forms of crime.
So what is WEBINT or Web Intelligence today?
According to a more contemporary source, Web Intelligence means taking unstructured data and moulding it into structured insights, with digitalized notifications and predictive analysis generated based on the web's relevant info. The same source indicates:
"Web intelligence (WEBINT) is a means to efficiently identify the intelligence available in open source (OSINT). Structuring and visualizing web-based information allows an analyst to surface tactical information like technical indicators, and strategic understandings like the swaying sentiment of a troubled region.
This structured approach allows for efficiencies in OSINT collection and analysis. This gives a threat intelligence analyst the information he/she needs to make a more targeted search of their network logs and/or private data sets [...]"
Features like geo-location tracking, facial recognition, image and text detection, gunshot detection and others that power investigations, (building a full understanding of criminal networks and connections), are critical and depend on sophisticated expertise in Artificial Intelligence. Web Intelligence has equipped a range of industries and its manpower with timesaving abilities free of human error, increasing safety, uptime, response times to crimes, their prevention, and infinite types of threats hindered or prevented from harming society.
Where and How to Access Game-Changing WEBINT?
As mentioned above, the truly revolutionary and power-charged WEBINT comes from software loaded with human-like abilities but that far surpass human capacity with algorithms that are fierce, fueled, and fast to find just what you're looking for, all thanks to AI (Artificial Intelligence). Some developers are genuine leaders in the field of AI-driven Web Intelligence solutions, servicing homeland security in the United States, to police investigations and national security in various parts of North America, the UK and Europe.
Cobwebs Technologies has become a leading developer of software that services security agencies and law enforcement, alongside businesses in niches like insurance, finance, private sectors and more. With potent Artificial Intelligence at the foundation of the company's various tech solutions, visualizing connections is simple, identifying anonymous entities is simplified, and preventing everything from tragedy, to crime, terror, fraud and cyber attacks is now possible more than ever. Using tools like anonymous browsing, image, text and facial recognition, plus the developer's ongoing updates, users can view the web's data up close and personally, saving infinite hours of time and leveraging operations of organizations worldwide, while supporting social justice and order.
Social Media in the Face of Web Intelligence: The Golden Hour's Golden Nuggets of Insight
While to some innocent citizens it might be horrifying to perceive them as a database of the world's billions of faces, names, connections and collaborations, social networks have become a massive asset to those looking to identify networks, main and conspiring actors of criminal or illegal activity. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms are loaded with golden nuggets of info, but often the secret to security agents' success is tracking down just the data these networks offer within an hour of a noteworthy event, from a terror attack or threat, to civil uprisings, shootings, natural disasters and more. This critical time slot is also known as the golden hour. Hence if we finalize the definition of what web intelligence is, without question, Social Media Intelligence, while a field of its own, is also an inseparable aspect of today's most applicable Web Intelligence and should be considered a part of WEBINT's defining insights, or the data many organizations seek and revert to for insight.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
