What is open source intelligence?

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence produced entirely from publicly available information: websites, filings, job postings, patents, reviews, social media, press coverage, and technical footprints. The term comes from the government intelligence world, where “open source” contrasts with classified collection.

Commercial competitive intelligence is, almost by definition, OSINT: everything worth knowing about a competitor’s pricing, features, hiring, and messaging is public — the challenge is collecting it systematically and noticing changes. The public-sources-only boundary is also what separates legitimate CI from corporate espionage; if you need deception or unauthorized access to get it, it is not OSINT.