ISS World Asia Recap: Pushing the Boundaries of OSINT

September 17, 2026

DarkOwl returned to ISS World Asia this year to meet clients, prospects and partners across Asia and learn about common challenges for law enforcement in 2026.

As the world’s largest gathering of regional Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Homeland Security analysts it offers an unrivalled opportunity to develop and react to practitioner needs in the region.

DarkOwl met several professionals responsible for wide ranging police specialisms, from drug trafficking, investment scams to money laundering, terrorism and CSAM who were keen to understand how DARKINT technology can accelerate and enhance their day-to-day work.

*Figure 1: A live demo of* *DarkOwl Vision* *from Director of Strategic Partnerships* *Magnus Svard*

This year centred around the following topics:

AI-Powered Investigation Platforms – the dominant theme across nearly every session track was the power of AI to fuse mobile forensics, CDRs, OSINT and financial data into unified investigative workflows. Sessions repeatedly emphasised moving from “systems of record to systems of intelligence” and using agentic AI to automate case-building and analysis.

OSINT, DARKINT and Social Media Monitoring – as ever, there was focus on open-source intelligence gathering on persons-of-interest, including foreign-language collection (Chinese, Russian, Arabic) and evolving multi-format monitoring across TV, radio and social media.

Deepfakes, Voice Analysis, and Disinformation – multiple sessions addressed synthetic media threats – forensic voice comparison, deepfake detection and case studies like the use of deepfakes in hybrid warfare. This reflects growing concern about AI-generated disinformation as an operational and battlefield weapon.

Encrypted Communications and Mobile Forensics – it’s no surprise that cracking encrypted messaging apps (like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal) and extracting intelligence from mobile devices (and even satellites) and smartwatches was another recurring theme. This theme bridges lawful interception with digital forensics as encryption increasingly blocks traditional intercept methods.

*Figure 2:* *Lindsay Whyte* *presenting* *DarkOwl Vision* *to a room full of APAC police analysts*

Notable this year was the competency of many more police forces and intelligence agencies in DARKINT investigations. Be it through 3rd Party vendors or their own manual scripts and penetration techniques. We no longer must prove the value of DARKINT; instead, simply prove the value of DarkOwl.

As an OEM into many all-source/OSINT aggregators, we noticed an uptick in inquiries at the booth for API integration and source fusion use cases as a result.

DarkOwl has solutions for hands-on Darknet investigators (wishing to have a Darknet-only productivity search tool) through to users of enterprise TIPs and link analysis tools (wishing to have DarkOwl data readily alongside other data).

All in all, another successful year – a huge thank you to our partner network in APAC who help make these trips so productive.