Nico Dekens from ShadowDragon: Make The World A Safer Place With OSINT

Nico Dekens, known as the Dutch_OsintGuy online, is an All Source Analyst specializing in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), online Human Intelligence (HUMINT) and Online investigations. He has over 20 years of experience as an all source Intelligence Analyst at Dutch Law Enforcement. Nico eats, sleeps, and lives everything which has to do with OSINT, online investigations, Intelligence gathering and Analysis. He is very active within the OSINT community, being the Co-founder of the OSINTCurio.us project and a SANS Institute instructor. Currently, Nico is working as the Director of Intelligence, Collection Innovation at ShadowDragon. In this episode, Nico provides valuable insights into his investigations on the decentralized web, experiences of saving people from the ongoing Ukrainian war, as well as concerns for the polarized-bound world. He also touches a bit on Vicarious Trauma with himself as an example and offers a few prevention tips in the end. 0:00 Welcome! 01:08 Tell us a bit about yourself! 10:35 What was it like running threads of investigations years ago? 16:26 Have you done any investigations revolving around the DAO or decentralized web? 20:25 What are the tools you use for investigations? 26:14 Have you seen people hindered by only using specific tools? 30:05 As an investigator, what's your biggest concern with the world changing drastically now? 43:38 How does saving lives make you feel? 48:59 Where will people start if they want to do what you are doing now? 49:09 What are the three things you would say to someone getting into this field? 52:36 Tell us about Vicarious Trauma! 56:09 Does Vicarious Trauma also cover people being numb to horrific materials? ■ About The Pivot Brought to you by Maltego, The Pivot deep dives into topics pivoting from information security to the criminal underground. Each episode features interviews with experts from the industry and research fields and explores how they connect the dots. ■ About Maltego Used by investigators worldwide, Maltego is a graphical link analysis tool that allows users to mine, merge, and map data from OSINT and third-party data integrations for all sorts of investigations—cybersecurity, person of interest, fraud, and more. The podcast streams free on Spotify. You can also watch it all go down on ⁠YouTube⁠. Don't forget to subscribe to our ⁠Twitter⁠ and ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to stay on top of our latest updates, tutorials, webinars, and deep dives. For more information about Maltego, ⁠visit our website⁠.