OSINT Academy Week 1

I am so thankful to have the opportunity to participate in the training offered by the OSINT Academy and the Hetherington Group.

Week one began on Monday, March 24th. I began my morning at 4 a.m., eager to dive into the training. I had already determined that I would make myself wake up each day at 4 a.m. for the 8-week duration of the class. I find the mornings better for focus and engagement. I am determined to gain all of the knowledge I can from this course and then pass my OSC certification.

The course began with a great video from Cynthia Hetherington, the CEO and founder of the Hetherington Group. I can tell you from just watching that introduction video that Cynthia is extremely smart and passionate about her work.

After the video, I was required to read through three chapters of Michael Bazzell's book OSINT Techniques: Resources for Uncovering Online Information In those chapters, I learned a lot of information about how to properly lay the foundation for a successful OSINT investigation. Some of the topics covered included custom configurations made to Virtual Machines to ensure Managed Attribution. I was already familiar with several of the tools mentioned, but not the custom configuration that was explained in detail.

Next, I was required to read three chapters from the book "Osint: The Authoritative Guide to Due Diligence" by Cynthia Hetherington. These chapters were very informative. I learned about due diligence, documentation best practices, how to properly set expectations, and how to effectively maintain good ethical boundaries.

This class also has many other benefits, such as the opportunity to network with others in the class who all work in different capacities involving OSINT work. The instructors are very accessible and always willing to help via email or Slack.

If you have the opportunity to take this course, I highly recommend it! I am looking forward to the next 7 weeks of training.