False narratives spread fast.
As a lead risk intelligence consultant at Securitas, I’ve seen how a single rumor can ignite unrest, with the potential to impact site security and employee safety.
Information has always shaped opinion. However, the ease of accessing information and the speed at which it spreads means it’s increasingly being manipulated and weaponized to cause damage that threatens governments, businesses, and people across borders and industries.
Risk intelligence services help organizations understand what’s real and what’s not. In this blog, I’ll share how risk intelligence can help you sift through the data and identify potential threats, so you can effectively counter information disorder.
Sophie Cairney, Lead Risk Intelligence Consultant
Understanding information disorder
What do we mean when we say information disorder? We’re really talking about three broad categories:
- Misinformation – False information shared unintentionally, but that still causes harm
- Disinformation – False information spread intentionally to cause harm
- Malinformation – True information shared or exploited to cause harm
Unfortunately, many of us have been guilty of the first one when we have shared a social media post or forwarded something we believe without verifying the information. While this seems like a harmless mistake, misinformation has the potential to cause serious harm. For example, we observed how misinformation fueled panic and unrest surrounding immigration raids in the U.S., impacting site security and employee safety.
Disinformation includes an intent to cause harm, and we’ve seen how false information about executives has impacted investor confidence in defense organizations.
Malinformation also includes an intent to cause harm, but uses truthful information. An example includes how one hacktivist group recently exploited corporate data leaks from a global entertainment company to push their own agenda.
Each of these incidents shows how quickly narratives, whether real, false, or manipulated, can be turned into tools of disruption.
Why it matters for your organization
Information disorder can impact any business – from multinational corporations to small businesses – directly or indirectly. When it happens, a false narrative can:
- Spark protests in the vicinity of your key sites and/or assets
- Fuel online and physical harassment campaigns against executives and employees, including third parties/supply chains
- Trigger reputational damage that erodes client trust
- Disrupt operations and drain resources during critical moments
- Reduce investor confidence, affecting long-term business planning
- Impact employee morale, affecting recruitment and retention
- Prompt legal or regulatory investigations, delaying operations and impacting reputations
- Influence market positions or values, impacting organizations’ competitive edge
Any of these can escalate quickly into costly business disruptions that ripple across operations.
Largely influenced by the pandemic, organizations within the global pharmaceutical sector have seen an increase in information disorder in recent years. Mis- and disinformation surrounding the effects of vaccines and medicines have persisted with operational and reputational consequences. In addition, heightened criticism of executives, whose priorities have been called into question for promoting profits over health, continues to impact sales and share prices.
In the U.S., a malinformation campaign began after the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A website, which appears to have since been taken down, published the contact information and personal details of more than 1,000 executives employed by organizations across multiple industries. In this real-life example, we can see how malinformation resulting from a threat to one person, company, or industry has the potential to impact virtually any sector and directly shape the global threat landscape.
How risk intelligence counters the threat
The digital age is here to stay, and threat actors’ ability to exploit information will only continue to rise in the coming years. In fact, the World Economic Forum lists information disorder as a top global risk in its 2025 report.
So how do we counter this threat? How do we identify what’s real and what’s not? More importantly, how do we stay ahead of threat actors’ intent on manipulating information?
The key is risk intelligence services, which use a variety of sources – including expert human intelligence and cutting-edge technology for open-source intelligence (OSINT) – to identify and track emerging narratives and global flashpoints that could impact organizations or executives.
We leverage an all-source intelligence approach at Securitas to identify emerging trends and understand the latest threat actor tactics surrounding information disorder. This enables us to provide finished intelligence that gives you the confidence to make informed decisions on current security needs and future preparations.
With accurate, timely, and actionable intelligence, organizations can more easily separate facts from fiction before harmful narratives gain traction.
Protection that builds resilience
When it comes to risk intelligence, we talk about resilience quite a bit. What do we mean? And why does it matter?
Business resilience is the ability to not only adapt quickly in the face of unexpected circumstances, but also the ability to prepare for what’s around the corner. You may not be aware of the hacktivist targeting your data center, for example, but with risk intelligence you can identify similar threats in another country or industry. In short, it’s the ability to anticipate threats and risks and to prepare proactive strategies that allow you to adapt effectively in a VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous – world.
While information disorder often occurs in digital spaces, you can build resilience by protecting against the information battles unfolding online and in the media. Identifying these threats with risk intelligence helps protect businesses in an era when every headline, hashtag, or shared video has the potential to be manipulated or exploited.
Being armed with the intelligence you need gives you the decision-making advantage of knowing what steps to take to prevent business disruptions, while also developing and implementing incident response and crisis communications plans.
Securitas’ risk intelligence services can help you prepare before a crisis hits, mitigate threat events, avoid future incidents and reduce risks with confidence.
Reach out to learn how risk intelligence can help you stay protected and prepared against information disorder.
