Flashpoint acquires Echosec Systems, elevates OSINT capabilities

Flashpoint has acquired Echosec Systems, a provider of open-source intelligence (OSINT) and publicly available information (PAI) for national security, public safety and enterprise customers.

With this acquisition, Flashpoint states it will significantly expand its OSINT capabilities to drive on-the-ground situational awareness, executive protection, geopolitical risk assessments, counterterrorism, misinformation and disinformation identification and response, and crisis response.

According to Flashpoint, intelligence practitioners are witnessing a revolution in how OSINT can be used to support cyber and physical security missions around the world.

Based in Victoria, British Columbia, Echosec is a specialist in collecting and disseminating mission-critical open-source intelligence in support of these goals.

Echosec helps its users to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds through OSINT and PAI, including an array of social media and geospatial collections, to protect people, assets, and infrastructure.

For more than a decade, Flashpoint has been a known expert in delivering an actionable suite of intelligence solutions, derived from PAI, chat services, foreign-language forums, criminal marketplaces, paste sites, and illicit communities across the internet.

By leveraging Echosec's social media collections and geospatial insights, Flashpoint significantly expands its capabilities to deliver a more robust combination of data, analytics and automation across a wide range of security use cases.

Flashpoint president Donald Saelinger says, "Intelligence practitioners require a converged, user-focused solution that includes insights derived from both open and closed intelligence sources.

"Integrating Echosec's worldwide social media collections, intuitive interface, and industry expertise into Flashpoint will deliver unparalleled value to our customers, to help them best identify and mitigate all types of risk."

Echosec Systems CTO Michael Raypold, says, "We'e thrilled to join Flashpoint and unlock a new dimension in OSINT and risk intelligence.

"Combining Echosec's usability and geospatial capabilities with Flashpoint's differentiated intelligence will enable our customers to understand, contextualise, and respond to emerging threats in an information environment spanning social media, technical and attack surface indicators, vulnerabilities and breaches, and deep and dark web sources."

Used by governments, commercial enterprises and educational institutions worldwide, Flashpoint helps organisations protect their most critical assets, infrastructure and stakeholders from security risks such as cyber threats, ransomware, fraud, physical threats and more.

Security practitioners - including physical and corporate security, cyber threat intelligence (CTI), vulnerability management, and vendor risk management teams - rely on the Flashpoint Intelligence Platform, comprising open source (OSINT) and closed intelligence, to proactively identify and mitigate risk and stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape.

Echosec Systems provides security and intelligence teams enhanced access to a wide range of open source intelligence in real time. The Echosec Systems Platform and API are trusted by teams worldwide to deliver timely, relevant data for initiatives including geopolitical risk assessments, counterterrorism, brand protection, disinformation monitoring, and crisis response.