How to Choose an OSINT Training Provider
A provider-agnostic checklist, an enquiry email, and a procurement business case to help you spend your training budget well.
Hello from the OJ team,
A few of you have asked us which OSINT training to take. We have thought about it, and we have decided not to name any specific providers. Staying editorially independent matters more to us than selling ad space, and we would rather give you the tools to choose for yourself.
So we built something we hope is more useful. This week’s issue gives you three of them: a checklist to vet any provider, an email template to send before you book, and a one-page business case for procurement. All of it draws on our own experience teaching across the public and private sector.
Here is the thing to keep in mind. The OSINT industry is not regulated, and anyone can offer training. That openness is a strength, but it does mean quality can vary, and we have heard from people who paid a lot and came away with generic content. This framework is here to help you choose well.
And as always, you will find the latest tips further down the issue.
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OSINT Tradecraft Tips & Industry News
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A free AI prompt library brings geospatial tasks into QGIS through the AI Edit plugin, processing satellite imagery, enhancing images, visualising developments, and generating map renders | read more | access the plugin
The author built OpenOSINT, an open source MCP-native OSINT toolkit that agents can run autonomously with nine included intelligence tools and CLI support | access GitHub | read LinkedIn post
This tweet lists ten open-source GitHub repositories for free web crawling, browser automation, mobile data extraction, and anti-detection capabilities | read more
Stephen Adams raises questions about whether the UK's under-16 social media ban and its age assurance checks could let platforms link or restrict the covert research accounts OSINT investigators rely on | see his LinkedIn post
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How to Choose an OSINT Training Provider
Credit where it is due
Before the checklist, a word on the providers who get this right. The OSINT community owes a great deal to the people who dedicate their time to teaching others, both free and paid. They built much of what this field is. Their courses, workshops, blogs, livestreams, video tutorials, write-ups and more bring new practitioners in and sharpen the rest of us. This article is not a knock on them. It is a way to help you find them.
