OSINT Training Log: Nonprofit Backs Italy's Cybercrime Unit for Child Safety

With the backing of a child protection nonprofit, this Italian Cybercrime Unit underwent advanced OSINT Training with OSINT Industries, enhancing the OSINT child protection skills essential for a response to today’s digital threats.

Mission Objective: Training OSINT Expertise in Child Protection

In the Police Center in Roma, 14 civil law enforcement officers - members of an elite Italian Cybercrime Unit - began an intensive three-day journey. They joined OSINT Industries for a groundbreaking initiative. The aim: to expand this first-class unit’s skills in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), ski2 lls now invaluable for tackling child abuse cases. This OSINT Training program was a collaboration, with a child protection nonprofit giving their financial support to Italy's law enforcement in countering child exploitation.

In the OSINT Training course these officers took, ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’, we worked with these law enforcement professionals to equip a toolkit of OSINT skills and methodologies. With iPhones, SIM cards, and a full suite of secure hardware provided - including four 4G routers, four servers, and an AI-capable server for advanced data processing - this cybersecurity team updated their safeguarding strategies to tackle the most modern child safety crises.

Challenge: Uniting Europe Against Child Exploitation 

‘Despite Italy’s comprehensive laws criminalising child sexual abuse and exploitation, children remain vulnerable, even within their circle of trust…’ - Country Overview 2024, Council of Europe [Source: COE]

As child exploitation becomes an online issue, it becomes a worldwide issue. Cybercrime doesn’t conform to traditional geographic jurisdictions. As a result, the European Union established the 2007 Lanzarote Convention, codifying child protection laws and promoting an increasingly collaborative approach towards combating child exploitation. As the 14th state of 48 to ratify this convention, Italy has been a key player in this strategy to unite the European cyberpolicing community.

Alongside Italy’s elite anti-CSAM Cybercrime Unit - the National Centre for Combating Child Pornography on the Internet (CNCPO) - organs like Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) are utilizing the collaborative power of OSINT to monitor forums where Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is distributed and created. This has led to successful joint operations, dismantling online pedophile networks by leveraging shared OSINT to target offenders that operate across multiple EU countries.

This is the good news. However, the bad news is this: despite collaborative efforts, the EU still hosts the most child abuse material in the world. Europe now hosts 68.6% of global CSAM, up from 56% in 2021. 

Italy has made significant progress in combating child exploitation, but even here vulnerabilities remain that are a microcosm of wider child protection struggles across Europe. Italy faces an increase in online and AI child abuse material, a poorly-handled migrant trafficking crisis, and socioeconomic disparity in areas like Calabria and Sicily that lack social service provision. 

‘These gangsters are turning the continent into a toxic warehouse for this dangerous criminal content… Countries need to know that all it takes is a couple of bad image hosts to wash up on their shores… and soon they will be the destination of choice.’ - Susie Hargreaves OBE, IWF Chief Executive [Source: Internet Watch Foundation]

It’s here that nonprofits, such as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), step in to identify and even ameliorate these shortcomings. Nonprofits extend the spirit of collaboration. They aid EU organizations in developing strategies to help victims, raise awareness and implement tools that quickly identify, remove, and block CSAM; like they were crucial in facilitating this OSINT Training. Looking at the successes of OSINT-powered initiatives, partnering with nonprofits to increase availability of OSINT Training across member states could assist in turning the tide against Europe’s influx of ‘bad images’.

OSINT Training: ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’

Course: ‘Online Child Safety & Digital Investigations’

Duration: 3 days 

Equipment: 

• iPhones’ encryption and privacy features make them the best hardware for sensitive investigations. Most OSINT tools are optimized for iOS (including OSINT Industries). iPhones also smoothly integrate with cloud and live communication services, and most officers can use them without extra training.
• SIM cards offer secure communications for sensitive investigations, enabling encrypted voice and data transmission and use of SIM boxes. Seamlessly swapping between devices, these compact and versatile chips are adaptable for anonymous OSINT fieldwork.
• 4G routers give secure and reliable internet connectivity, supporting multiple devices. Their portability and flexibility allows anonymous research in the field and real-time data collection.
• Servers are storage solutions for secure large-scale data processing and analysis. With centralized data management, handling multiple data streams, performing  complex analytics, and protecting sensitive information is far easier. Speed, efficiency, and reliability combine with scalability to support evolving data demands as investigations progress.
• Servers with AI GPUs possess immense processing power. This facilitates rapid data analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning. As high-performance machines, these servers are needed to analyze vast datasets, detect anomalies, and automate complex tasks. They manage this with AI capabilities that enhance image and text processing, and therefore data sifting.

Skills Developed:

This course - essential for law enforcement - trains officers in OSINT strategies critical to child protection in the modern digital climate. Through GeoINT, SOCMINT, and specialized techniques, officers who take this course learn methodologies to identify and track CSAM, disband offender groups or criminal networks, and identify vulnerable victims even before they come to harm. 

• Fundamentals of OSINT: Although often familiar to officers before they arrive, the trainees recapped their foundational OSINT skills, such as distinguishing and identifying valuable sources, effective research methods and ethical best practices. 
• Digital Footprint Analysis for Offender Tracking: ’Digital footprints’ are an essential element of OSINT for child protection, as both offenders and victims leave behind a trail with their online activity. Officers learned how to gather and collate evidence that can profile a predator or facilitate a successful prosecution. Officers worked on delineating suspicious from benign social media posts, tracking site visits, and parsing metadata to identify grooming tactics, signs of trafficking activity, and common offender anonymization techniques.
• Advanced Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT): As EU policy recognizes, poor moderation and limited corporate accountability make social media a dangerous place for children. Officers learned Advanced SOCMINT skills, including both monitoring and infiltration - alongside identification, people-searching, pattern analysis, and data-parsing skills for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
• Dark Web Intelligence: The dark web is the notorious origin point and original haven for CSAM, child abuse content, and child trafficking activity. Officers were trained in how to safely navigate the darkest parts of the internet, gaining the skills to hunt down bad actors while utilizing encrypted communication channels preserving investigator anonymity to avoid detection or jeopardizing organizational security.
• AI-Powered OSINT Tools for Evidence Gathering: Officers found out about the range of OSINT solutions available to gather and analyze investigative data, including OSINT Industries’ real-time tool. This included advanced, AI-powered OSINT tools, focussing on AI's ability to automate functions, ensure robust data reporting, and handle large-scale data. Officers also learned about OSINT tools’ built-in compliance checks, preserving the chain of custody vital for legal proceedings. 
• Cybersecurity Best Practices: Officers learned to bolster their Operational Security (OpSec). They learned to keep themselves secure with VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), SIM cards, encryption, servers and more, particularly when handling sensitive data on a large scale.

Exercises: Implementing OSINT Skills in Child Safety Cases

Our training, as always, focuses primarily on practical applications and real-world scenarios.

Officers were presented with simulations and studies of real-world child exploitation cases, giving them practice scenarios to work on. By conducting cutting-edge simulated OSINT investigation scenarios, officers had a chance to consolidate new and existing OSINT skills,  and learn to apply their new investigation techniques on-task.

Together, we covered best practices for preserving digital evidence and the all-important OSINT chain-of-custody. As making sure evidence is admissible in court is paramount in child exploitation cases, these exercises were key. Officers learned how to use reporting capabilities offline and within OSINT tools - like OSINT Industries’ export process - to painstakingly document every step of the data collection and handling process. This trained officers to maintain evidential integrity, and follow foolproof and challenge-proof ethical guidelines when gathering the critical data to protect young people. 

• Real-World Case Simulations. Officers worked through aforementioned exercises that simulated previous cases. This gave officers a controlled, supportive environment to perfect the OSINT techniques they had just learned. Officers could safely experience OSINT in a real-life context, investigating online predators, identifying vulnerable victims, and gathering all the evidence they need.
• Collaborative Investigations. This initiative was born out of collaboration - so our OSINT Training course inevitably emphasized the importance of sharing intelligence. Officers trained effective strategies for teamwork while completing exercises, and practiced building networks that boost OSINT capabilities. By fostering a collaborative environment, officers found they could combine their insights and leverage each other's expertise to work faster and better. This united effort not only aided the officers’ learning, but created a robust framework for ongoing communication and resource sharing that perfectly complements current strategies for protecting children.

#OSINT4Good: More Than Just a Slogan

For us, #OSINT4Good isn’t just a corporate slogan. It’s a movement making ripples in the real world. 

OSINT Industries already offers free platform and API access to law enforcement, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, but we wanted to do more.

Because we care about #OSINT4Good, we usually offer our OSINT Training for child protection at cost to us, disregarding profit. Our commitment to the cause is sometimes supported by nonprofits: in this case, fully funded by Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). Founded in 2013, OUR’s mission is to collaborate with law enforcement agencies to facilitate rescue operations of vulnerable women and children, providing resources and training where possible. OUR focuses on raising awareness, funding aftercare programs for survivors, and advocating for stronger legal frameworks. For more, or to donate, visit OUR's website.

However, even if no additional funding is available, our industry-leading OSINT Training is still free. It’s crucial that we provide this training free of charge. 

All officers need to access these resources, and our mission remains to equip every law enforcement professional with the skills necessary to protect vulnerable children and strengthen their efforts against exploitation. Italy’s Cybercrime Unit is going forward with what they’ve learned to make a difference. OSINT can, and will, change lives - and change the world.

Training Evaluation:

All 12 officers left this course invigorated, motivated and equipped with a new future-ready  set of OSINT safeguarding skills. They demonstrated an impressive grasp of actionable practical knowledge that genuinely enhanced their child protection work - even when getting to grips with the most advanced or complicated methodologies and technologies, they excelled.

Best of all, this OSINT Training course visibly fostered a collaborative spirit. Officers felt more ready by the course's conclusion to share insights and strategies when tackling unique challenges. This sense of community not only boosted their investigative confidence, but also laid the groundwork for those vital ongoing partnerships in tackling child exploitation. This Unit left our course ready to face the modern digital landscape.

Curious about OSINT Training? Explore the OSINT Industries Academy.

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