Intelligence Management Outside the US Intelligence Community

Now more than ever, intelligence management plays a key role in protecting nations and just as importantly, employees and company assets. With threats coming from home and abroad, there is an ongoing need for trained professionals who can identify risk, assess potential harm, and most importantly, prevent it.

Intelligence management is the process of compiling and analyzing intelligence information to produce reports and recommendations. The goal is to provide useful guidance to leaders who are making decisions. By generating intelligence reports, you might help prevent threats to employee safety. You might see an opportunity for your company to undercut a competitor. You might identify competitors trying to steal a company’s trade secrets. You might even be able to determine if internal employees are selling confidential documents.

This dynamic and never-ending five-step cycle includes planning what information is needed, collecting the data from many sources, processing the data into a usable state, analyzing the information by including assessments of the situation and judgements about the possible implications to produce a report, and disseminating the final reports called intelligence products to the decisionmakers who requested them or others who may need them.

Intelligence management is a growing field. Intelligence management analysts are well paid and can expect higher than average job growth through 2029.

Five Jobs in Intelligence Management Outside the US Intelligence Community

Professionals with an intelligence management degree can develop creative solutions to answer analytic questions and solve difficult problems both for their government or corporations. They conduct research, develop query strategies, and analyze information to produce reports and recommendations. The information that is collected, processed, and analyzed can be relevant to any and all things that might stop an organization from reaching its strategic goals so could include competitors’ reports, foreign target intelligence, or possible insider threats.

If you worked in Intelligence Management, you might focus on one of the five career areas in the industry:

• International turmoil: Wherever there is a war going on, extreme poverty, or political unrest, it can result in threats to employee safety. International business or vacation travel poses risks of kidnapping, extortion, or theft. Shipping to and from high risk areas of the world also requires protection for products and people (for example, pirates off the coast of Somalia).
• Counterintelligence: Counterintelligence refers to impeding the intelligence efforts of others. Competitors might attempt to spy on your company to obtain trade secrets and learn about your future plans for new products. A foreign country might try to duplicate your software or steal patented information so they can copy the designs to compete with you in the marketplace.
• Competitive analysis: There are many legal ways to gather intelligence on a competitor’s future plans. Analysts search news reports, listen to published interviews with key executives, and investigate the content on their website and blogs.
• Mergers and acquisitions: Your company might be considering a purchase or merger with another company. Intelligence managers will be called to research their products, customer demand, debts, and current executives’ backgrounds so decisionmakers can make the right choice to go forward or not.
• Cybersecurity: When the Twitter account of even the president of the United States can get hacked, you know cyberthreats are everywhere. More likely they affect average citizens like in 2013, when the personal information of more than 70 million Target customers was exposed. Or when a breach of Marriott International that went on for years revealed the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth, and genders of up to 500 million people. If cyberattacks are everywhere—and they are—then cybersecurity needs to be everywhere too.

What Does an Intelligence Manager or Analyst Do?

An intelligence manager has the ability to think strategically, act tactically, and write effectively. The intelligence analyst displays strong analytical, communications, and critical thinking skills. They must also be able to build strong cross-group working relationships and demonstrate exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail. If you are excited about data, are results oriented, and want work with a team, your day-to-day responsibilities might include:

• Collecting, analyzing, and evaluating sources, assets, events, and systems for potential risks
• Helping the operations team balance short term tactical goals with long term strategies
• Identifying information gaps and locating and evaluating information sources to answer those gaps.
• Evaluating issues and questions using advanced qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Managing intelligence and counterintelligence operations
• Implementing contingency plans and proactive security measures to ensure the continuity of operations
• Conducting and presenting basic research, analyzing the implications, and producing a report that includes recommendations
• Writing reports and making presentations on recommendations to assist decision-makers

What Types of Job Titles Are There in Intelligence Management?

With a degree or certificate in intelligence management, here are some of the jobs you might find as part of a corporate security team:

• Research Analyst
• Identity Management Threat Analyst
• Business Intelligence and Analytics Manager
• Quality Assurance Data Analyst
• Targeting Analyst
• Imagery Intelligence Analyst
• Software Competitive Intelligence Analyst
• Cyber Defense Technologist
• Investigations Intelligence Analyst
• Data Scientist

At National American University, we offer an online Bachelor’s degree in Intelligence Management and a Master’s degree program in Intelligence Management, as well as two levels of certificates, that will help prepare you for a rewarding career. And if you already have some experience or a certificate in the field, you may be able to transfer those credits to further your degree. Call 800-209-0182 to learn more today.