The Wild, Wild Internet

Cyber Investigations

What your applicant posts online affects your business. That’s why cyber investigations have become an essential part of the preemployment background check in today’s age.

An ever-increasing amount of information becomes available as your applicants share parts of their lives online. There’s nothing wrong with using social media, but a business owner and HR team need to be aware of a potentially offensive or criminal online post made by an employee that could impact the business.

While the turnaround time of cyber investigations varies depending on how often the subject uses social media, businesses are realizing the value the social media scan provides.

Understanding what your applicant is like outside of work can lend insight into how they will fit into your internal culture. It can also help identify how an applicant has followed professional IT protocols in the past.

Most people have at least one form of social media. These investigations provide a fantastic overall look at an applicant, in their own words.

A social media check is a great start, but there are multiple levels of investigations and new tools that can help improve the efficiency of just scrolling through Facebook.

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Social media checks will always be done by a human at Commercial Investigations LLC.

However, it is time-consuming and there are new solutions to aid in collecting and parsing through large amounts of information.

OSINT, also known as Open Source Intelligence, is the process of gathering and analyzing publicly available data for intelligence purposes.

OSINT tools can provide fast and highly specific searches that can rapidly decrease the time needed to collect your applicant’s information.

These tools are still new, so they are extremely complicated and rapidly evolving.

One day they may go on to impact many fields, possibly even our own. Commercial Investigations LLC might use these tools to help gather information in the future, but it will always be reviewed by a human investigator before getting to you.

Looking to the Future

Cyber Investigations will continue to become more important as younger generations with multiple social media accounts enter the workforce.

These searches allow employers to receive a full picture of an applicant and can save the business time and money if adverse information is found. They also help eliminate likely incompatible applicants before the onboarding process.

As we continue to innovate, Open Source Intelligence is evolving into another tool that we can use to help streamline your hiring process. We won’t lose our human intervention touch, but your applicant’s data will be collected and vetted more efficiently with these strategies.

The risk of skipping over this valuable check may drastically reduce the effectiveness of any quality vetting system. All of these factors prove the value and importance of cyber investigations.

At Commercial Investigations LLC, we recognize this and are committed to providing and continually improving our cyber investigations.