Public Sources

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There is a wealth of information publicly available. Printed publications and websites often tout an organization's accomplishments and frequently provide extensive details. The entire community of industry analysts and corporate intelligence is built on gathering information which is publicly available. It is true in intelligence gathering that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Collecting and correlating information from many sources can build a more complete and detailed picture than any single source could provide. It is amazing how much information can be gathered, much of it without access or cost. People and systems are surprisingly willing to give away information.

Financial Reports

There are a number of public sources of financial reports about a company. There are public filings with the Security and Exchange Commission for publicly traded companies and the company itself will publish an annual report containing information about the company, its executives, its activities, and its partner relationships.

Public Websites

Websites often publish information without the level of involvement by corporate legal and public relations departments that printed material has. They will often report on new and exciting developments of the organization. They might highlight outstanding individuals or the types of systems which are used. Information is often published on websites without any review for sensitive content.

Domain Name Registration

The registration of domain names provides contact information for the owner, administrator, and financial contact for the domain. This contact information is often a specific individual, including e-mail and physical address. This may offer a strong foothold for social engineering or it may well indicate where the website is hosted and thereby indicate alternate methods of attack through other systems hosted at the same site.

Name Services

Name services publicly expose the hostname of internal systems, and broadcast the organization's internal structure, the size of its departments, the allocation of resources, and whether there is an expansion or contraction ” all valuable information to competitors .

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