Using OSINT in Family Offices – A Beginners Guide

Introduction

The ongoing accumulation of wealth within individuals and family groups has created a need for more innovative and strategic investment and financial management structures[1]. As a result, Family Offices are becoming increasingly influential in the world of wealth management, handling a diverse portfolio of responsibilities that include investment, tax, insurance, and real estate, as well as operational management of business and legal affairs, reputation management, security, and philanthropic activities[2].

However, they are also a target for fraud, as illustrated by a recent high-profile case in Southeast Asia, where it’s alleged that $56 million was stolen by employees[3]. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case, as often, Family Offices place an over-reliance on trust without the countercheck provided by a mature and robust controls framework to help deter, detect, and prevent internal threats of this nature.

Due diligence should be a critical activity for Family Offices, not only to help understand who they are employing, with whom they are doing business, and who is supplying them with goods and services, but also to form an integral part of the process for evaluating investment opportunities and identifying potential risks.

Leveraging open source intelligence (OSINT) for these activities can be a game-changer for Family Offices. By gathering and analysing publicly available information, cost-effective access to insights that go beyond surface-level analysis can be gained, significantly enhancing risk management and decision-making capabilities across multiple domains.

Through illustrative use cases, this article demonstrates how Family Offices can benefit from OSINT and provides some pragmatic first steps to quickly and cost-effectively start leveraging publicly available information.

Real-World Applications for OSINT in Family Offices

For Family Offices, OSINT presents an opportunity to enhance operational risk management processes and provide faster, cost-efficient access to information, thereby supporting informed investment decisions and managing risk more effectively.

The six illustrative use cases outlined below are designed to demonstrate the flexibility, benefits, and scalability of OSINT. OSINT can be equally effective in small local Family Offices as it can in multi-national enterprise-level family-owned conglomerates.

1. Enhanced Background Checks on Employees

Family offices typically employ staff in sensitive roles, for example, investment managers with access to financial and investment information, household staff with access to the personal lives of principals, or personnel with detailed knowledge of physical security controls. It is therefore unsurprising that Family Offices are often defrauded by trusted employees, especially when there are weak or non-existent pre-employment screening processes, or even worse, where trust alone is relied upon as the primary control mechanism.

In addition, an effective pre-employment screening process is widely recognised as one of the key mechanisms to help manage the risk of internal fraud[4]. It is therefore considered a tried and tested control that every organisation should have in place.

OSINT can enhance pre-employment screening by providing an extra layer of depth, for example, by:

• Using resources such as usersearch.ai[5] to identify the candidate’s usernames, then reviewing their historical social media activity for inappropriate behaviour, comments, or affiliations, for example, on Instagram[6], Facebook,[7] or X[8].

• Identifying adverse media through searching sources such as Google News[9], LexisNexis[10] and sigma360[11].

• Validating the contents of a candidate’s resume and their responses to any pre-employment questionnaire, by analysing data from business-focused sources such as LinkedIn[12].

• Establishing whether the candidate has a history of good character or any criminal convictions by searching local court records or databases, such as the Public Access to Court Electronic Records Case Locator (PACER)[13].

• Searching for undisclosed business interests or potential conflicts of interest.

• Verifying employment history and qualifications.

Example: A family office utilised OSINT to vet a candidate for a senior investment position. While the candidate’s resume appeared impressive, OSINT revealed inconsistencies in their employment history and identified a series of controversial social media posts that were inconsistent with the values of the Family Office.

2. Vetting Third-Parties

The importance of understanding who your suppliers and third-party providers are is increasingly critical, especially given that it is common for Family Offices to rely upon consultants, financial advisors, real estate managers and other external service providers.

Failing to perform due diligence can result in Family Offices entering business relationships with third parties that they may later regret. However, an efficiently executed due diligence or vetting process can uncover risks such as conflicts of interest, criminal convictions and connections or pending legal or regulatory actions, sanctions exposure, adverse media reports, financial problems, environmental scandals or even simply disproportionate service complaint levels.

OSINT can be used to help perform due diligence on third parties or, where appropriate, enrich any existing vetting process by allowing Family Offices to:

• Check professional credentials and certifications, for example, by searching certifications databases such as FINRA’s BrokerCheck[14], or the FCA’s Financial Services Register[15] in the UK.

• Review client testimonials and online reviews, for example, by searching on sites such as TrustPilot[16].

• Search for undisclosed business interests or potential conflicts of interest.

• Analyse their digital presence for signs of professionalism.

• Check against sanctions listings and other blacklists such as the US Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Sanctions List[17].

• Conduct detailed social media analysis to identify potential reputational risks.

• Check and monitor for any adverse media reports.

• Check for any regulatory or legal breaches, for example, by reviewing the SEC’s enforcement litigation database[18].

Example: A family office discovered through OSINT that regulatory authorities had fined a potential financial advisor for unethical practices. This information was not disclosed during the advisor’s pitch, highlighting the importance of independent verification.

3. Due Diligence on Investments and Acquisitions

OSINT can help more thoroughly assess potential investments by examining regulatory filings, litigation history, market reputation, and exploring the backgrounds of target connected parties. It can provide Family Offices with an ability to uncover hidden risks that may not be identified in traditional due diligence reports.

Through the deployment of OSINT techniques and tools, Family Offices can:

• Evaluate the reputation of a company, its executives, and key stakeholders by analysing data from news articles, blogs, forums, and social media. News aggregators and media monitoring services such as Google News[19], or Meltwater[20] can provide rich data for analysis. This type of information can help identify any past controversies, legal issues, or unethical behaviour that may not be disclosed in official documents.

• Review publicly available records, business registries, financial databases and public filings via sources such as OpenCorporates[21], SEC Edgar[22] and Companies House[23] to establish and confirm the ownership structure, subsidiaries, and affiliations of a target company. This type of data can help Family Offices better understand potential conflicts of interest or hidden liabilities.

• Supplement the information in the financial statements disclosed by the target by analysing data contained in analyst reports, market commentary, industry-focused forums, publications and business information providers such as Morningstar[24] and Bloomberg[25].

• Identify past or ongoing litigation, regulatory sanctions, or compliance issues by searching court records, regulatory filings, watchdog reports and monitoring for related adverse media.

• Understand the target’s market position, potential growth and any significant risk factors by analysing and comparing industry trend data, examining competitor activity and reviewing customer sentiment through social media and sector-focused user group analysis.

• Determine the status of the target's information security environment by analysing breach databases, hacker forums, and cybersecurity news forums to identify if the target has been involved in any data breaches or exhibits poor cybersecurity practices, which could pose significant risks.

Example: A family office discovered through OSINT that a property developer with whom they were considering an investment claimed to have completed several high-profile projects in an emerging market country. Public record analysis and local news coverage revealed that many of these projects were incomplete and embroiled in legal disputes, leading the family office to withdraw from the deal.

4. Post-Investment Monitoring

Well-informed Family Offices, tasked with managing and growing generational wealth, will monitor the performance and the reputation of their investments.

OSINT can be used to track a range of key post-investment indicators and events, for example:

• Monitoring changes in leadership or management by analysing the “About Us” section on a corporate website, following the LinkedIn[26] profiles of key executives or tracking press releases via a service such as PR Newswire[27].

• Tracking emerging news from the sector invested in to identify controversies, significant issues or other forms of adverse media.

• Monitoring user forums and communities to detect shifts in market sentiment or spikes in negative or positive customer reviews.

• Keeping up to date with changes and requirements of authorities such as Regulators, that could impact the business by monitoring and setting up news feeds for relevant bodies, for example, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)[28] or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)[29].

Example: A Family Office invested in a technology start-up and used OSINT tools to monitor the company's online presence, employee reviews, customer feedback, and industry news. Through this monitoring, they identified early signs of financial trouble, including negative employee feedback, high staff turnover, vendors' complaints about delayed payments, and adverse feedback from end-users regarding poor support. This information alerted the Family Office, enabling them to intervene quickly, assess the risks, exercise their contractual management rights, and provide support to the start-up to help protect their investment.

5. Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence is a crucial element of benchmarking your company’s performance[30], helping not only to drive strategic direction but also to identify growth opportunities that may have been previously unconsidered.

OSINT can help provide insights into market trends, competitor activities, and emerging opportunities. For example, OSINT tools and techniques could be deployed to:

• Analyse industry developments and regulatory changes by monitoring industry forums and communities, user groups, and review platforms. For example, in India, one of the significant sources of news in the telecommunications sector is TelecomTalk,[31] which a Family Office could monitor for industry and competitor news.

• Monitor competitor strategic priorities by reviewing public filings, annual reports, shareholder meeting notes, patent applications, and senior and executive hiring activities.

• Review the annual reports of a competitor’s key service providers to identify any material income streams attributed to them. This can provide valuable insight into the competitor's investment levels in specific technologies and help indicate their strategic direction.

Example: A Family Office used OSINT to track the activities of a competitor in the renewable energy sector. By analysing public filings and news reports, they identified that their competitor was positioning itself for entry into a new market segment focused on offshore wind energy. This information helped confirm their strategic direction, enabling them to invest in that sector ahead of their competitor.

6. Identifying Fraudulent Charities and Donation Schemes

Family offices often manage significant philanthropic activities but there can be risks involved for example, non-profit organisations such as charities can be exploited and used as vehicles for laundering the proceeds of crime or financing terrorism[32].

The good news is that the use of OSINT tools and techniques can help verify the legitimacy of charitable organisations by:

• Analysing social media content and claims.

• Checking websites for mission statements and financial reports.

• Searching public records for registration information and complaints.

• Performing adverse media searches.

• Checking charity ratings sites such as Charity Navigator[33], the UK government’s Charity Register[34], or charity aggregators such as FindthatCharity[35].

• Searching blacklists such as the OFAC Special Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List[36]

Example: A family office used OSINT to investigate a charity that claimed to support disaster relief efforts. Public records revealed that the organisation had no history of delivering aid, and its founders were linked to widely reported fraudulent schemes in the past.

Scalable and Available OSINT Tools

The integration of OSINT with risk and compliance operations doesn’t mean Family Offices need to budget for an enterprise-wide solution requiring an army of third-party implementation consultants. By using a combination of commercial and freely available tools, including many that they may already have access to, they can quickly start benefiting from OSINT and gain access to more profound and actionable insights.

For example:

• Standard Search Engines and Web Scraping Utilities: Tools like Google[37], Bing[38], and Yandex[39], as well as specialised web scrapers such as Octoparse[40] can gather information from websites, news articles, and public records. With a properly constructed OSINT workflow in place, this can help provide a rich vein of additional context to the information they currently have access to.

• Social Media Monitoring: Popular, and heavily-used platforms such as LinkedIn[41], X[42], and Facebook[43] can be monitored to provide current and up-to-date insights into individuals, organisations and those people connected to them.

• Data Aggregation Tools: Commercial tools like LexisNexis[44]or Pipl[45] can provide access to aggregated data from multiple sources enabling comprehensive analysis.

• Network Mapping: Tools like Maltego[46] can help users visualise relationships between individuals, companies, and other entities.

• Dark Web Monitoring: Advanced OSINT tools can monitor the dark web for potential threats, including data breaches and fraud schemes.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

The integration of OSINT into the operations of any business can generate significant benefits. However, there are ethical, legal, and procedural risks that must be addressed, before Family Offices embark on their OSINT journey. These include, but are not limited to:

• Data Privacy: When collecting and analysing information, compliance with relevant local and international data protection and privacy legislation, such as GDPR[47] in the EU, or CCPA[48] in California, USA, is not optional; necessary safeguards must be put in place.

• Accuracy and Reliability: Publicly available information is not always accurate or reliable. This results in a situation where it is essential to cross-reference multiple sources to verify and validate information. This is directly related to the number of OSINT professionals grading intelligence so that end-users can determine its credibility and the level of confidence to place in it[49].

• Ethical Boundaries: Safeguards must be put in place and enshrined in the policies and procedures of the Family Office to prevent intrusive or unethical practices, such as hacking or accessing private information without consent.

• Investigative Principles: Experienced investigators adhere to a structured and methodical process that helps ensure accuracy, reliability, and legal compliance. Suppose a Family Office identifies information that may result in formal proceedings, which require careful handling. In that case, they should consult with experienced third-party investigators or their lawyers for advice, if such expertise is not available in-house. This includes essential investigative safeguards such as maintaining a transparent chain of custody for any evidence to help ensure its integrity and admissibility in legal proceedings. This includes documenting how evidence is collected, handled, and stored to prevent tampering, contamination, or other forms of alteration.

In addition to these pre-requisites, Family Offices should also consider that there is currently no globally recognised international standard or methodology applicable to OSINT operations, nor is there a universally accepted training or certification regime.

This means that approaches, techniques and quality could vary from location to location, requiring significant focus on policies and standard operating procedures with regards to OSINT activities. It’s a risk, but one which, if managed carefully, can generate significant benefits.

Conclusion

By integrating a well-managed OSINT capability into their risk operations, Family Offices can gain access to deeper insights, enabling them to make better-informed decisions, improve risk mitigation, protect their reputation and identify growth opportunities.

From pre-investment due diligence to fraud detection, personnel screening, and reputation management, OSINT offers a versatile and cost-effective capability.

However, the right tools, policies and procedures, safeguards, and ethical and legal frameworks must be in place. Still, if that can be achieved, Family Offices will have the opportunity to take full advantage of the increasing volumes of publicly available information that can be collected by OSINT specialists and incidents such as the internal fraud reported in Singapore could become much less common than they currently are.

Authored by: The Coalition of Cyber Investigators

Paul Wright (United Kingdom) & Neal Ysart (Philippines)

©2025 The Coalition of Cyber Investigators. All rights reserved.

The Coalition of Cyber Investigators is a collaboration between

Paul Wright (United Kingdom) - Experienced Cybercrime, Intelligence (OSINT & HUMINT) and Digital Forensics Investigator; and

Neal Ysart (Philippines) - Elite Investigator & Strategic Risk Advisor, Ex-Big 4 Forensic Leader.

With over 80 years of combined hands-on experience, Paul and Neal remain actively engaged in their field.

They established the Coalition to provide a platform to collaborate and share their expertise and analysis of topical issues in the converging domains of investigations, digital forensics and OSINT. Recognising that this convergence has created grey areas around critical topics, including the admissibility of evidence, process integrity, ethics, contextual analysis and validation, the coalition is Paul and Neal’s way of contributing to a discussion that is essential if the unresolved issues around OSINT derived evidence are to be addressed effectively. Please feel free to share this article and contribute your views.

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