Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is the very start of the intelligence analysis and security management set of courses. There are three. The first one is introduction to intelligence, then a bit more about security management in the center, and then a bit more about developed intelligence practices and how that supports security management a little later on. So there are about 21 lessons. Some are quite complex, the middle ones the security management goes into threat analysis, risk measuring, and either side, I built the intelligence capabilities.

Some organizations might not like the word intelligence and I fully understand that they don't want to work in countries why intelligence is a dirty word. So for intelligence, also read information. also read security information, and a variety of other sort of renames or rebranding intelligence have been given over the past decade. Some items suddenly throughout the first component, the first course is to introduce you to intelligence and analysis. It's very broad, or they're very broad subjects. analysis is not something you can learn in 10 minutes from a PowerPoint is something you have to practice that you have to know your subject.

But this is an introduction to intelligence process and analysis itself. I was going to introduce you to why intelligence is necessary for security managers. A lot of organizations have security managers, and they may also have security analysts who work to the security managers, because they may work in various countries around the world or sometimes a wide variety of countries. around the world. So they need different skill sets. The security analyst will feed information to the security manager who will make decisions then based on what is happening in the world, and what the analysts think is going to happen in the foreseeable future.

And we're going to provide some examples of how well managed intelligence can significantly reduce the risks. In some countries, you can pretty much foresee what's going to happen in Afghanistan, for instance, you know, there's going to be attacks, you know, there's going to be bombs and bullets and IEDs on the roadside, and death and destruction sadly. So it's relatively easy to foresee what's going to happen because you know, all those bad things are going to happen at some point in the future. So you can plan for it, you can prepare for it, and you can reduce the risks and try and avoid it. In other countries where serious incidents may only happen once or twice a year, or even once or twice a decade. It makes Very difficult to build up a security model that you can sustain to defend your staff, your assets, your reputation and your business continuity, for instance.

So intelligence analysis, as far as instance goes can be quite tricky depending on what country you're looking at. But also you're going to throw in the mix there. Crime trends rises in drops in crime may affect your security posture, natural disasters, there may be more chances of a natural disaster in certain times of the year than others. So your security analysis is always looking forward to say okay, in two months time, it's going to be hurricane season or Cyclone season. So we have to start preparing, and then in turn will trigger the security manager to start planning ahead to start getting these people prepared for the eventualities of bad things happening, or even the reduction of bad things depending on how things are going out in the environment. So what's intelligence?

Intelligence is a discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance to clients or employers, or even your security managers in support of business operational or safety security decisions. Now, that's the de facto definition. It varies depending on which organization you work for. It varies depending on what country you're in about how they look at intelligence, how they gather intelligence, do they use it as an effective tool, and a forward thinking tool? Or is it always in the background? There are lots of different approaches to intelligence, and this is just a general guideline.

Let's break it down a little. So it's a discipline. It means it's something that you have to learn for instance, there's a subject that you don't just you're not just born with something you're born with intelligence, obviously, but this is different. This is not God given intelligence or it's not intelligence that you learn through the formative stages of your life, you generally have to go to a school to learn the skills, and that some of those skills and what we're going to learn during this course, collection. collections are a very interesting component. And I'm going to cover this in more detail pretty much in the next few lessons.

But it's the collection of the right sort of information from the right sources, verifiable sources, good sources or sources that you can back up and say they are good through using alternate sources. And what do you do with that collection of information? How do you do it? Do you remember it? Or do you filter it into your brain? Do you put on a databases, databases could be anything from a spreadsheet to a serious software capability or even onto maps?

And then how do you analyze this and looking at the risk, for instance, talking about al Shabaab in Somalia. How'd you analyze that capabilities? Well, first of all, you got to know what their capabilities are information, you have to know what their attacks, like have been like in the past so we can build a picture of what they can do in the future, and what sort of weapons they use and what sort of leadership what sort of area do they cover? What's their intent? What are their capabilities? Have they do they put things on the internet to say, yes, this is what we want to achieve in the next 10 years total domination of Somalia or the destruction of the governments or whatever their whatever their reason for being is do they advertise the fact?

Do they link with other organizations, other terrorist organizations or extremist organizations around the world? Do they launch attacks into Kenya, which Yes, they do. Do they attack shopping malls The hotel complexes in Kenya Yes, they have. So you need to learn, you need to learn all about who your target audience is. So the people you're interested in, there will just be our ship have, of course, it could be the whole of Africa, what's happening across the whole of Africa. It could be the whole of Africa in the Middle East northa depending on what your job your job scope is.

So how do you collect all this information? How do you synthesize it together? To answer the questions that your client or your employer or your security manager wants and analyze what you think is going to be like in the areas of your interest the country you're interested in, and over the foreseeable future, and the foreseeable future can be the next week. It can be the next month, it can be a whole year. If you're working for an extractive organization oil in the oil industry. You might be looking two years ahead of what you think could be happening in the country.

In a certain country, to give them the opportunity to deploy people to start exploration and start operations. And that, of course, is extremely tricky because there are lots and lots of geopolitical triggers that can change that outlook. So that whole analysis could change on someone dying or someone being assassinated or demonstrations becoming. Arab springs, for instance, could change everything overnight. So it all depends on what your employer wants, what your security manager wants, what your client wants, in the first place as to what information you're going to gather, how you're going to collect it, how you're going to collate it, how you analyze it, and the end result is how you also disseminate it, how you push it back to the people who need to know. Now the definition is is a systematic method of identifying the risks and threats.

Methods of for warning, you and your client, your employer of potential incidents or events that may impact on your operations may impact on your business may impact on the safety and security of your staff. This is a bit more relevant if you work for a non government organization, for instance. So it's systematic, that word is critical because it means that every day you collect the same stuff from the same sources, you try and answer the same questions in your head. Is it safe to go along this road? Is it not safe to go on this road? Is it safe to visit that town next week?

Is it not safe? Is it safe to use this airport this airline this local airline and then methods of for warning your client? How do you do that? Do you send out alerts on WhatsApp do use telegram do you send emails Do you go into the next office and tell them and that is all part of the intelligence process and how they impact and you must you must know, as an intelligence analyst, what you're looking at what what, what the client wants you to protect with your information in your analysis and your intelligence is operations routes out of the ground convoy is going to be with food, for instance, is it the business overall? Are you trying to protect the business structure and the reputation of the business? Or are you looking at the safety and security of the staff around your area of operations that may include the families, for instance, if you're if you've got x Pac families, and you're looking after them, so it could, it could be a hole, it could be all of those things.

It could be the operations and the business and the safety and security and you may have to link in with IT security as well to make sure that that crossover between physical and cyber is protected. So this is a pretty good definition as far as the lower range CEOs are a little bit more simpler about their safety and security needs, but they may be spread across 60 odd countries. While looking at the photos, why do we need intelligence we need intelligence so that we can better protect our organization from critical incidents. And critical incidents can be anything ranging from a road traffic accident through to an earthquake through to a terrorist act. So it's the reason we have that intelligence is so that for warning, our staff have the possibilities of an earthquake happening, or the possibilities of a terrorist attack happening or a terrorist attack happening in a city, which we can avoid, helps us reduce risk and keeps our people safe.

It keeps our operations going and which in turn keeps the business continuity going. So we need intelligence from A lot of different reasons, but they're pretty much all protected. And that's why you'll see security intelligence or security analysis is mingled in now. It's not for most employers, just pure intelligence, you're not providing in depth analysis, or you're not necessarily providing in depth analysis about what is going to happen in this country over the next five years. It could be very tactical, it could be your they want information on what's happening on this road in the next eight hours, because we're going to send a convoy down there food. So it varies.

It depends on what your employer wants, depends on what they need to better protect their organization. So how do we achieve it? There's that word systematic. You know, every day, every week, every evening, every morning, every lunchtime every afternoon, you're going to check your sources, both. So we're going to provide systematic assessment of available information. from a variety of sources in pursuit, in pursuance of the client's direction that direction is, what do they want to know from us, in order to provide informed analysis, which is what we provide.

We provide informed analysis because we built this picture of, say, Al Shabaab, for instance, we know exactly what they do, how they do it, what their intentions are, their area of interest, their area that they cover, their area of reach, can provide that informed analysis. And the direction is then incorporated the whole process of intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination, which comes up in the next lesson. And we move that we meld that information into intelligence and that that that bridge from information to intelligence is where we are, where as the analysts, we put all that information in a big bucket. Our experience all our education, everything we learn on a day to day basis about our specialist areas or our specialist subjects, turns the information that we pick up from the various sources into intelligence, because it's relevant to our employers relevant to the security manager is relevant to whatever client you're working for, which that, that that stage has become intelligence.

And that is the era of changing information into intelligence. This is the critical component of the whole process. It's simple. There are hugely complex variations of this cycle. This is nice and simple. So it generally starts off the direction face, the client, your employer, your security manager, whoever is asking you for the intelligence tells you what they want.

Now, it should be very precise. It should be we want to know about this and between these dates when we want the report in this format, and we want it by this date. But in my experience, you rarely get it that precise. My recommendation will be when we talk about direction is get as much detail from them as possible, because you can guarantee that if you don't, you produce the report, the client will look at it and go, yeah, this isn't really what I wanted. And you've wasted a ton of time and they've wasted a ton of money, or you have to go back and rewrite it and maybe re research the data. You asked for it at the start.

You manage their expectations. But also it means that you have a very streamlined look at what the client is trying to achieve. When they get this information. Try and get as much, much data much sooner. information from them as possible about what they what sort of information they want. That direction phase is very critical.

Get that right. The rest of it tends to fit together, the collection and also in there as collation is the collection of information, how and where do you put it to just read it all filters into your mind, you put it on a spreadsheet? Does it go into a complex database? Does it go to a mapping system? How do you collect all that stuff, so that when it comes out when you do the analytic analytical process, you look at it on the map. So for instance, dots on the map are incidents or their towns or it shows a spread of extremist activities.

And also you're producing all that analysis in the form of text. And we're going to go into the benefits of mapping and the different types of reports later on in the course. So you analyze all that you put it All together in whatever report the client said they want or whatever type of report they want. And then you disseminate that. And you disseminate it in time because there's nothing worth nothing worse in intelligence than producing a report light. bureaucracy often does that or just poor management.

But at the start, if you say, what do you want it you want in a week's time, okay, I'll have it to five days, that's perfect. If it's late, then it's quite often becomes useless to the client. Now, there's nothing worse than late intelligence. Unless the intelligence cycle you get a grip of this, do each component part properly, the whole process will keep going. And you'll have a lot better opportunity to produce good intelligence for your employer, for the security manager for your client. But we'll be going into that in a bit more detail on later on in the course.

And that's the introduction. Not very sexy at the moment, intelligence can become quite sexy depending on what which part you move into the analysis part, it can be a little bit dry. But if you're looking at terrorist organizations, where you're looking at protecting NGO op operations projects in 60 to 100 countries around the world, which on a day to day basis can be pretty challenging. It gets fun, interesting. So analysis in itself can seem a little bit dry. But once you dig into it, once you get interested in the subject matters, depending on what your client your employer wants, then it can become nice, interesting.

So I look forward to going on through this course and the other courses with you