Online detective: how much can you earn on business intelligence
Intelligence network
Once the Agency Cabis asked the owner of a construction company who was looking for his former partner — he brought the business a substantial sum, and disappeared. “He was deep in debt, travel abroad was closed. First and foremost, we decided to look for it in the region of residence on the territory of the Leningrad region”, — says the founder Cabis Igor Bederov. The customer handed over to the Agency he had personal information about the partner, family status, Hobbies, interests. Based on these data, analysts found the account of the attacker “Vkontakte”, although the name and most of the data on the page was fictional. There Bederov found the accounts of his civil wife and son. The pictures that were posted relatives were geocoded — iPhone automatically detects the location of the photographer and shares it on the social network. It turned out that every weekend the family spent in one of settlements of Leningrad region. Need a house, analysts have found with the help “Yandex.Map. The customer had already filed a statement to the police, so law enforcement officers quickly went and arrested the partner of the debtor.
The lawyer of the company “Sarcyn and Partners Sevan Avalyan explains that in the methods Cabis there is nothing illegal, yet the Agency is working with open government databases or information published by the user voluntarily, for example, information from social networks, blogs and other online resources: after publication it gets the status of the public.
Bederov three years served as the senior operative of criminal militia of the municipal Department of internal Affairs of St. Petersburg and then another several years he worked as a chief of security in the trading-industrial company “North wind textile. After that, he decided to create a security Agency that caters to companies in outsourcing: normal “bezopasniki” need to pay salaries and third-party Agency can attract a specific task, which is cheaper. “The market for cyber fraud is rapidly growing, more and more crimes is “moved” online. While traditional security is often not willing to change methods of work,” says Bederov.
In 2014, Bederov left and founded the Agency Cabis (Consulting Agency of Business Intelligence & Safety). He decided to focus on the Internet is to use a database, pages in social networks, publications in the media, geotags and IP addresses. According to Igor, the market of business intelligence has several dozen companies, some of which (“R-Techno”, “the Informant” and others) uses the same open data and analytical methods. “Of course, I was not a pioneer, but the market is competitive intelligence still remains small. Competition as such, I don’t feel — we don’t even elbow,” says Bederov.
Business intelligence in Russia has started to develop since the beginning of 2000-ies: then appeared on the market the big players, says Bederov. Impetus to the development of the market has given the e-government program: after 2009 free began to appear volumes of data about natural and legal persons — base ships, FTS, FMS, FBS. At the same time to the same time, Internet penetration has grown to such an extent that analysis of data from the network began to yield real results. The founder of the service intelligence Sorge Oleg Gromov adds that the market is good news for the worsening economic situation. “The crisis has put the business in terms of “game-off”, each activity of a competitor turned into a noticeable impact on profits.” According to him, today about 60% of the players in the market of business intelligence using the Internet-resources as the main sources of information. The Internet is not a panacea, work with sources in the Network provides only 10-50% of the required information and does not exclude work in the field — monitoring object, personal meetings with sources of information and phone calls, said the founder of the Agency, “the Informant” Boris Vorontsov.
The initial investment Bederova was small — for office rent in St. Petersburg, buy three computers, operating software (program SiteSputnik) and access to databases”Integrum”, “Юнирейт24”, “Infologic”, SPARK) it took about 200 thousand RUB their own savings. The entrepreneur hired two analysts Petersburg, which are known to work in the organs. License to work Cabis not required: unlike the private detectives Agency has not provided services investigation and does not represent the collected data in court.
To promote their services Bederov decided on this unusual step — started a blog to talk about typical violations and how to combat them. This helped him to attract your first customers, he says.
Fighting over canned food
90% of customers Cabis — legal entity. A typical service — checking of counterparties before entering into transactions employees before hiring, monitoring the activity of the company in mass media and business reputation. For these purposes, analysts usually turn to databases of the Federal migration service, Federal tax service, SPARK, Integrum and various aggregators, analyze open data and provide the customer with expert conclusion about whether to trust the contractor or future employee. One-time cost of 1-5 thousand rubles, you can buy a subscription for 20-50 thousand RUB
“In our methods there is nothing supernatural, — said Bederov. But the customer needs not just extract from the database, it needs the output. Staff Cabis track “bad’”, which was a lot of legal entities, fictitious Directors who manage hundreds of companies, and other typical signs one-day firms.
“For example, we see a company with a multimillion turnover, which officially engaged in the sale of petroleum products, but was in a Studio apartment with ten companies,” says Bederov. It is obvious that this transit firm, which the owners evade taxes: contact with such counterparty.
Another example is the tender won by the company, unknown before in the market. A comparison of the date and place of registration and data allow us to understand that this company was created specially for participation in competition, and owns her classmate is a top Manager who was assigned the tender to carry out. A ten-minute investigation allows the client Bederova to try to challenge the results of the competition.
In addition to these “routine” orders Cabis periodically involved in more serious projects: the investigation of online scams, search for missing persons, collecting information for journalistic investigations (for example, the Agency was investigating the sale of military awards for portal Security.<url>”). The average bill for such services reaches to 150-200 thousand.
Missing goods returned to us within two days after beginning an investigation, it was all done very well”, — says the financial Director the Luga cannery Elena Trushina. The factory sent a truck of canned food at a military base in Sevastopol, but the load time has not arrived, and the driver has stopped communicating. Delivery of large goods from the factory was engaged in the transport company “Engine logistic”, which, in turn, rented trucks and hire drivers for transportation. “We have provided all necessary documents, scans of the rights and of the passport of the driver who, as it turned out, was a fake,” recalls Trushina. Engine logistic appealed to Cabis.
Bederov decided that the fraudster will try to sell cans. “The goods were military markings, so we quickly found ads about selling it on the Internet”, — says Igor. To get in touch with the sellers was not difficult. After that, the Agency has addressed in law enforcement bodies together with the police intelligence organized a test purchase, confirmed the authenticity of the goods, arrested him and returned to the warehouse of the plant. In this operation Cabis earned 300 thousand rubles.
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The economy of surveillance
Cabis revenue in 2015 amounted to RUB 6 million, an average per month — 400-500 thousand. the Business is profitable and does not require significant operating expenses — net profit for the same 2015 amounted to RUB 3 million, the Main items of expenditure Cabis — rent for office and PAYROLL.
The company also works Bederova two staff members, another 40 professionals in different fields (IT, working with the polygraph, the detective) are periodically attracted in Moscow, CIS countries and Europe, Israel and the United States under labor contracts. For staff analysts the rate of 30 thousand rubles. per month, the rest of their revenue comes from the percent of completed orders. The size of this premium depends on the contribution of the artist in the case, but may not exceed 30% of the profit according to the results of completed tasks. According to entrepreneur, the employee comes to 150 thousand rubles.month.
The day the analyst typically performs 40-50 routine checks: this work usually brings about half of the revenue Agency (200-300 thousand). But revenues are soaring, when there are large orders. Record month brought 1.5 million rubles. So, one day Bederova was contacted by a client who wanted to track the movement of a group of alleged fraudsters in the countries of Eastern Europe. “He first came to the private detective who offered to listen to cell phone numbers of all members of the group and put up a huge bill — about 1 million rubles. first, it’s illegal, and secondly, simply unrealistic: if Russia has a chance to negotiate with the Opera, which will satisfy the wiretap in the case, which is, the borders of the country it is impossible”, — says Igor. He offered an alternative: to track what IP addresses the attackers left in the Network, which visited the sites and what is posted in social networks. The cost of the work dropped several times.
IP address Cabis receives with the help of sniffers is links that lead to a site open to employees Cabis log. It is enough to click on such a link, for example, the letter or “like” photos, as the Internet detectives will be able to track his IP.
Sometimes Bederov involved in law enforcement operations. “Assistance to law enforcement officers I regard as a contribution to the future. Today or tomorrow a police officer will retire or quit and go to work, most likely in one of the security services, which means we can get a constant stream of orders from there,” explains Igor. One of the successful examples of working with bodies is prevented by the action of extremists in St. Petersburg. By analyzing the pages, groups in social networks analysts came to the organizers of the campaign, followed their movements and gave orientation to the staff of law. “In the end, all the participants were waiting at the exit of the subway” — says the entrepreneur.
Study has not only contractors, but also clients. Once Cabis by order of one of the networks of building hypermarkets revealed trade by cash. Helped the image search from Google. Scoring in the search of unique photos of the products, analysts found several sites that had posted an ad about selling it, but the seller was not the client company and an individual. Usually, these boards include the name and phone of the seller, and sometimes e-mail and a social network account. These data led the analysts to one of the employees of the supermarket, that sold and left.
Sometimes the Agency treated individuals, usually with requests to find missing people. In 2015, the Hips revealed a high-profile case of the disappearance in St. Petersburg a young girl. According to the businessman, the investigators believed that the girl was killed, but three months was not able to find any clues. Analysts Cabis found that the abandoned page girls “Vkontakte” immediately after her disappearance, there is a new subscriber. The IP address of the new owner of this account has led the Agency to the monastery. “The girl had a chain of tragic events in his personal life — its young people were dying one after the other. She decided to withdraw from the worldly life, without telling his relatives about it, but the Internet helped you find it even in the monastery,” — says Igor. The story ended with a happy ending: the girl returned to her family.
Figures Cabis
336 million rubles — the volume of the market of business intelligence in Russia, according to the service’s competitive online intelligence Sorge
from 1 thousand rbl. to 300 thousand rbl. — cost of services Cabis
90% of orders coming to the Agency, make routine inspections of contractors
up to 150 thousand RUB comes reward analyst Cabis
Sources: data Cabis
The main problem of Internet spies Bederov calls the conservatism of the market participants. A big part of how customers Cabis and competitors are former employees of security agencies. “This is a very common pattern: in recent years, reduction in the organs reached the peak. Opera is often dismissed looking for a place or security, or in private agencies,” explains Bederov. But former employees of the bodies to act like the old fashioned, rarely use all the power of the Internet. “The Agency, aggregates information from the Internet offer customers more timely and useful Analytics than those who use classical off-line monitoring and communicating with sources — this reduces not only the time of task execution, but also the cost,” says Sorge founder Oleg Gromov. According to his calculations, the market size of business intelligence in Russia now amounts to 336 million rubles., and by 2018 could double.
According to Gromov, in the United States has about 200 agencies competitive intelligence, which, as Cabis, use analysis of open data on the Internet. In the West also developed the market the Internet-projects, which automatically collect data from public databases, aggregate them and issue the customer a ready reference.
Bederov is going to create such a tool — an online service for verification of candidates for employment and current employees: the website will request and receive aggregated data about a person from the FSSP database, KJV, websites GUS “Justice”, the Federal migration service, interior Ministry, social networking and media.
