Intelligence Monthly

Two components are key to creating the Strategic Intelligence Gap and maintaining a strategic advantage: Offensive Intelligence and Protective Intelligence. Offensive Intelligence comprises ethical and legal activities to gather data on the competition, on adversaries of all kinds, and the market environment and then, by analysis, turning that data into intelligence for decision-makers to rely on in decision-making and strategy development. Offensive Intelligence results in the pro-active, diligent understanding of an organization’s area of activity to wisely navigate challenges and uncertainties. Protective Intelligence is a set of activities that on the one hand controls the outflow of information from an organization and on the other hand uses adversaries’ own intelligence collection activities to manipulate their perception of the findings. Protective Intelligence is a defense that builds on existing security systems and works best with any new strategic initiative and activity. In short, it aims at

• keeping adversaries at bay by misleading and surprising them
• rendering adversaries’ intelligence efforts non-productive