AlertMedia- Experts & Thought Leaders

Ontic, a software provider delivering Connected Intelligence to unify how security professionals manage physical threats, mitigate risks, and strengthen businesses, announced a partnership with AlertMedia, a provider of threat intelligence, emergency communication, and travel risk management solutions. The agreement gives security teams a comprehensive technology solution, integrating AlertMedia’s emergency communication capabilities into the Ontic Platform. The partnership adds to the more than 60 integrations within Ontic’s Connected Ecosystem Program. Operational and cost-effective “Combining AlertMedia’s multichannel, two-way communication capabilities with the Ontic Platform gives corporate security teams the consolidated solution they need to be operational and cost-effective during a time of increasing and wide-ranging risks,” said Manish Mehta, Chief Product Officer, Ontic. Manish Mehta adds, “This partnership represents a significant step forward, enabling us to broaden our offerings and better address our clients' demands for enhanced situational awareness and seamless emergency communication, all within a connected platform." Fast, reliable communication Notifying employees of critical information is key to keeping people and organisations safe Notifying employees of critical information is key to keeping people and organisations safe. This partnership provides Ontic and AlertMedia clients with seamless connectivity and fast, reliable communication to inform the right people at the right time. Benefits of integration By leveraging AlertMedia in the Ontic Platform, users can:  Access human-vetted intelligence about potential risks near employees, facilities, and company assets. Create a notification from any Ontic signal to inform specific user groups or individuals. Select from multiple communication channels, including text, email, voice, WhatsApp, desktop alerts, and in-app messaging. Connect situational awareness and emergency communication to intelligence feeds and investigations. Easy-to-use emergency communication solution “Unlike legacy systems that lack agility, are too complex, and take months to deploy, both AlertMedia and Ontic are easy to use and can be implemented quickly,” said Christopher Kenessey, CEO of AlertMedia. Christopher Kenessey adds, “AlertMedia’s emergency communication solution is designed to improve employee safety, mitigate loss, and ensure business continuity during an emergency when every second counts." Streamlining operations "When paired with Ontic’s investigations and intelligence capabilities and end-to-end workflows, organisations can make more informed decisions and take action when potential threats arise,” concluded Christopher Kenessey. “As users of both solutions, it was exciting for us to see them come together to help streamline our efforts," said John Robert, Director of the Global Intelligence & Protection Center at Dow.  Saves time and resources John Robert continues, “Given the constantly evolving threat landscape, it’s critical to have mass notifications integrated within the same platform where we manage our intelligence feeds and conduct investigations. It saves us valuable time and resources. In our field, where every second counts, that's a game-changer.” Ontic users can purchase AlertMedia’s emergency communication and vetted intelligence solutions for use within the Ontic Platform, and mutual clients of both companies can purchase the integration between their existing AlertMedia products and the Ontic Platform.

AlertMedia, the threat intelligence, and emergency communication provider announced it will host its inaugural Employee Safety Conference from October 26-28, 2022, at the JW Marriot in Austin, Texas. The three-day event, exclusive to AlertMedia customers, will feature speaker sessions and workshops with safety, security, and business resilience experts from a wide range of leading organisations, including JetBlue, GitHub, the San Diego Padres, AlertMedia, and more.   Accurate and efficient communication “As the number of threats facing businesses and their employees continues to grow, organisations of all sizes are realising there has never been a greater need for timely, accurate, and efficient communication,” said Christopher Kenessey, CEO at AlertMedia. “The Employee Safety Conference is designed to give safety and security leaders spanning multiple industries a place to learn best practices and share strategies for everything from identifying threats and mitigating risks to building a sustainable safety culture.” Keynote sessions, workshops, and networking We’re thrilled to facilitate multiple days of in-depth discussion about how organisations can protect their people" “We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to host our customers and facilitate multiple days of in-depth discussion about how organisations can protect their people and businesses, no matter the situation,” concludes Christopher. During the conference, attendees will participate in keynote sessions, collaborative workshops, and networking opportunities with some of the foremost authorities in threat intelligence, employee safety, and organisational resiliency as well as peers from more than 100 world-class organisations. Panel discussions Keynotes and panel discussions will cover trends, insights, and best practices on crisis communication strategies, safety leadership, risk management, and more. Additionally, collaborative workshops will provide hands-on product training and opportunities to learn how colleagues from other organisations approach employee safety and business continuity programs. Attendees will also receive an exclusive preview of AlertMedia’s product roadmap for 2023.  Emergency preparedness, response, and recovery The Employee Safety Conference will catalyse industry connection as well as process innovation" “It’s no longer an option to reactively respond to an emergency or crisis of any kind,” said Elizabeth Loucheur, COO at AlertMedia. “Our goal is to provide organisations with the tools and resources required to successfully navigate any emergency or operational incident that may impact their people or business. The Employee Safety Conference will serve as a catalyst for industry connection as well as process innovation when it comes to emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.”  Minimise loss and ensure operational resiliency From severe weather to civil unrest to public health crises, the current evolving threat landscape has prompted more organisations to bolster their emergency preparedness and employee safety procedures to minimise loss and ensure operational resiliency. In fact, According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), businesses see an average return of $4 to $6 for every dollar invested in their workplace safety programmes. Furthermore, companies that offer exemplary safety, health, and environmental programs outperform the S&P 500 by between 3 and 5 percent. 

AlertMedia, the globally renowned emergency communication solutions provider, announced that the company has hired Laura Woolford as the Chief People Officer. Laura Woolford, who joined in June 2021, brings more than two decades of experience in HR leadership roles, at large and public companies. Guiding AlertMedia’s growth As Chief People Officer, she will play a strategic role in guiding AlertMedia’s growth, both domestically and internationally, while leading all aspects of People Operations, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) programmes. “AlertMedia and the leadership team have done an incredible job at finding people, who are passionate about the organisation and believe in its bigger vision,” said Laura Woolford, the Chief People Officer at AlertMedia. Human Resources (HR) expert As an HR leader, I’m responsible for guiding employees toward success" Laura Woolford adds, “I’m looking forward to helping the company to continue to recruit top talent, who are purpose-driven and will contribute to its next phase of growth. As an HR leader, I’m responsible for guiding employees toward success and I’m thrilled to help the AlertMedia team continue to recognise their future potential.” Prior to joining AlertMedia, Laura Woolford served as Vice President of Human Resources at GoDaddy, where she overhauled and expanded the HR function, to focus on organisational design and effectiveness, and strategic talent management. Before GoDaddy, Woolford was a Senior Director of HR at Tesla, where she supported the company’s Chief Technology Officer and all of U.S. manufacturing. During her time at the company, she grew Gigafactory 1 from 2,000 employees to over 8,000, in less than two years, while also creating an integrated talent strategy for the company. Aid the company in attracting top talent Laura Woolford has also held roles at Shell Oil, Corning, and four separate divisions of GE, including GE Aviation and GE Transportation. The role of Chief People Officer is critical to any company’s ability to attract and retain top talent" “The role of Chief People Officer is critical to any company’s ability to attract and retain top talent, and achieve long-term success,” said Brian Cruver, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder at AlertMedia. Brian Cruver adds, “Laura brings deep HR expertise to our leadership team and she shares the same values, and culture that make AlertMedia a great place to work. I’m confident she’ll continue to build on our strong foundation, to find and retain the best and most diverse team of employees.” AlertMedia, recognised by major publications One of Austin’s fastest-growing employers, AlertMedia has consistently been recognised as a great place to work, by national and local business publications, including earning recognition on Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces for 2021 and Forbes, Inc.’s America’s Best Startup Employers for 2021. Most recently, the company was named to Austin Business Journal’s 2021 Best Places to Work list for the sixth consecutive year, ranking #3. The company is currently hiring for numerous roles, across marketing, engineering, sales, and more.

Have you ever stopped to consider the volume of new data created daily on social media? It’s staggering. Take Twitter, for instance. Approximately 500 million tweets are published every day, adding up to more than 200 billion posts per year. On Facebook, users upload an additional 350 million photos per day, and on YouTube, nearly 720,000 hours of new video content is added every 24 hours. While this overwhelming volume of information may be of no concern to your average social media user posting updates to keep up with family and friends, it’s of particular interest to corporate security and safety professionals who are increasingly using it to monitor current events and detect potential risks around their people and locations—all in real-time. Meet the fast-paced and oft-confusing world of open-source intelligence (OSINT). What is Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)? The U.S. Department of State defines OSINT as, “intelligence that is produced from publicly available information and is collected, exploited, and disseminated promptly to an appropriate audience to address a specific intelligence requirement.” The concept of monitoring and leveraging publicly available information sources for intelligence purposes dates back to the 1930s. The British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) was approached by the British government and asked to develop a new service that would capture and analyse print journalism from around the world. Monitoring and identifying potential threats Originally named the “Digest of Foreign Broadcast, the service (later renamed BBC Monitoring which still exists today) captured and analysed nearly 1.25 million broadcast words every day to help British intelligence officials keep tabs on conversations taking place abroad and what foreign governments were saying to their constituents. OSINT encompasses any publicly accessible information that can be used to monitor and identify potential threats Today, OSINT broadly encompasses any publicly accessible information that can be used to monitor and identify potential threats and/or relevant events with the potential to impact safety or business operations. The potential of OSINT data is extraordinary. Not only can it enable security and safety teams to quickly identify pertinent information that may pose a material risk to their business or people, but it can also be captured by anyone with the right set of tools and training. OSINT for cybersecurity and physical threat detection Whether it be a significant weather event, supply chain disruptions, or a world health crisis few saw coming, the threats facing organisations continue to increase in size and scale. Luckily, OSINT has been able to accelerate how organisations detect, validate, and respond to these threats, and it has proved invaluable in reducing risk and informing decision-making – especially during emergencies. OSINT is typically shared in real-time, so once a situation is reported, security teams can then work on verifying critical details such as the location or time an incident occurred or provide the most up-to-date information about rapidly developing events on the ground. They can then continue to monitor online chatter about the crisis, increasing their situational awareness and speeding up their incident response times. OSINT applications OSINT can help detect when sensitive company information may have been accessed by hackers  Severe weather offers a good example of OSINT in action. Say an organisation is located in the Great Plains. They could use OSINT from sources like the National Weather Service or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to initiate emergency communications to employees about tornado warnings, high winds, or other dangerous conditions as they are reported. Another common use case for OSINT involves data breaches and cyber-attacks. OSINT can help detect when sensitive company information may have been accessed by hackers by monitoring dark web messaging boards and forums. In 2019, T-Mobile suffered a data breach that affected more than a million customers, but it was able to quickly alert affected users after finding their personal data online. OSINT is a well-established field with countless applications. Unfortunately, in an ever-changing digital world, it’s not always enough to help organizations weather a crisis. Why OSINT alone isn’t enough? One of the core challenges with leveraging OSINT data, especially social media intelligence (SOCMINT), is that much of it is unstructured and spread across many disparate sources, making it difficult to sort through, manage, and organise. Consider the social media statistics above. Assuming a business wanted to monitor all conversations on Twitter to ensure all relevant information was captured, it would need to both capture and analyze 500 million individual posts every day. Assuming a trained analyst spent just three seconds analysing each post, that would amount to 1.5 billion seconds of labor—equivalent to 416,666 hours—just to keep pace. While technology and filters can greatly reduce the burden and help organisations narrow the scope of their analysis, it’s easy to see how quickly human capital constraints can limit the utility of OSINT data—even for the largest companies. Challenges with OSINT OSINT data collection includes both passive and active techniques, each requiring a different level of effort and skill Additionally, collecting OSINT data is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Making sense of it remains a highly specialised skill set requiring years of training. In an emergency where every second count, the time required to sift through copious amounts of information takes far longer than the time in which an organisation must take meaningful action to alter the outcome. Compounding the issue, OSINT data is noisy and difficult to filter. Even trained analysts find the need to constantly monitor, search, and filter voluminous troves of unstructured data tedious. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have helped weed through some of this data faster, but for organisations with multiple locations tasked with monitoring hundreds or thousands of employees, it’s still a challenging task. Adding to the complexity, collecting OSINT data isn’t easy. OSINT data collection includes both passive and active techniques, each requiring a different level of effort and skill. Passive vs Active OSINT Passive OSINT is typically anonymous and meant to avoid drawing attention to the person requesting the information. Scrolling user posts on public social media profiles is a good example of passive OSINT. Active OSINT refers to information proactively sought out, but it often requires a more purposeful effort to retrieve it. That may mean specific login details are needed to access a website where information is stored. Lastly, unverified OSINT data can’t always be trusted. Analysts often encounter false positives or fake reports, which not only take time to confirm accuracy, but if they act on misinformation, the result could be damage to their organisation’s reputation or worse. So, how can companies take advantage of it without staffing an army of analysts or creating operational headaches? A new path for OSINT Organisations can leverage the benefits of OSINT to improve situational awareness and aid decision-making Fortunately, organisations can leverage the benefits of OSINT to improve situational awareness and aid decision-making without hiring a dedicated team of analysts to comb through the data. By combining OSINT data with third-party threat intelligence solutions, organisations can get a cleaner, more actionable view of what’s happening in the world. Threat intelligence solutions not only offer speed by monitoring for only the most relevant events 24/7/365, but they also offer more comprehensive coverage of a wide range of threat types. What’s more, the data is often verified and married with location intelligence to help organisations better understand if, how, and to what extent each threat poses a risk to their people, facilities, and assets. In a world with a never-ending stream of information available, learning how to parse and interpret it becomes all the more important. OSINT is a necessary piece to any organisation’s threat intelligence and monitoring system, but it can’t be the only solution. Paired with external threat intelligence tools, OSINT can help reduce risk and keep employees safe during emergencies and critical events.