In today’s globalized and hyper-connected trade environment, where conflicts, sanctions, and supply shocks can unfold overnight, maintaining transparency and control across complex supply chains is more challenging and critical than ever.
Looking at just one segment of the industry, cargo transport, losses due to theft reached record levels last year, exceeding $202,000 per incident, according to Verisk's CargoNet analysis. Without timely intelligence, supply chain managers are essentially forced to operate blind, sending their people and their goods through unknown environments filled with unknown obstacles.
To address the host of increasingly complex challenges in this space, organizations are turning to open-source intelligence to transform how they secure their supply chains in three critical ways.
For any interconnected company, a supply chain disruption can originate from a single point of failure, often in areas susceptible to issues like environmental hazards or criminal activity. OSINT tools help detect these threats early by surfacing public data, news alerts, and social media signals that indicate instability in specific regions. Skopenow’s Grid, for example, delivers real-time alerts across multiple data points, allowing organizations to react proactively to changing conditions that may impact production or distribution networks.
This kind of geographic situational awareness is not limited to natural disasters or severe weather events. It includes a broader view of the environment, such as traffic conditions that delay delivery routes, economic developments that affect suppliers, and regional crime that may endanger facilities or employees. With the right OSINT strategy, businesses can adjust logistics plans before incidents cascade into full-scale disruptions.
From the war in Ukraine to recent strikes on the Middle East, global tensions ripple instantly across supply routes and increasingly demand real-time alerting and rapid adaptation. OSINT equips supply chain teams with the early signals they need to make timely decisions when events escalate without warning.
Not all threats come from external events; some originate within the supply chain itself, hidden among vendors, products, or paperwork. Counterfeit goods have long plagued legitimate supply chains, particularly in high-value verticals such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, and luxury goods. The problem is growing in scale and sophistication, too. According to the OECD, global trade in counterfeit goods reached an estimated $467 billion in 2021, posing threats not just to revenue but to consumer safety, regulatory compliance, and national public health systems.
OSINT enables investigators to uncover counterfeit operations by scanning marketplaces, identifying suspicious supplier activity, and cross-referencing product listings against known legitimate vendors.
By tracing distribution paths and verifying associated entities, supply chain teams can isolate counterfeit risks early, often before affected products even reach retail shelves. This kind of investigation is especially critical in cross-border transactions where intermediaries can obscure the true origin or control of goods. By researching distribution paths, verifying associated entities, and checking for connections to sanctioned individuals or organizations, teams can uncover counterfeit risks and compliance violations early.
Another major risk vector is the physical theft and diversion of legitimate products already in motion. Organized rings involved in cargo theft and trafficking often use layered front operations and digital aliases to obscure their activities. OSINT is pivotal in breaking through this complexity. Using link analysis capabilities, investigators can visualize connections between seemingly disparate entities, uncovering networks behind large-scale product diversion or loss events.
Skopenow’s Link Analysis automatically builds these connections, mapping ties between individuals and shell businesses across a supply ecosystem.
Skopenow’s platform supports the full investigative lifecycle, from Grid's real-time alerting to Workbench’s detailed entity insights and Link Analysis' network visualizations. Skopenow enables organizations to go beyond detecting risk and start understanding and responding to it.
The result is an informed and agile supply chain security posture that withstands today’s threats and anticipates tomorrow’s challenges.
Join over 1,500 organizations—including 20% of the Fortune 500 and 50+ U.S. government agencies—that rely on Skopenow to collect and analyze publicly available information at scale. Learn more and schedule a personalized demo today at www.skopenow.com/try.