Geopolitical instability, global conflicts and growing social division have created a challenging environment for counter-terrorism authorities, while social media, online communities, messaging and gaming platforms have made it easier for terrorists to spread propaganda, communicate with individuals susceptible to radicalisation and recruit new followers without ever meeting them face-to-face.
As terrorist networks increasingly use digital platforms to communicate and distribute material, law enforcement faces the growing challenge of identifying evidence of terrorist activity among the vast amounts of information stored on digital devices.
To help tackle these challenges, Edinburgh-based Cyacomb, an expert in digital forensics, has launched a new counter-terrorism platform designed to help law enforcement rapidly identify known terrorist-authored material on digital devices.
Developed in partnership with counter-terrorism specialists Human Cognition, the platform supports faster investigations into extremists and radicalised individuals who may be progressing towards, or supporting, acts of violence.
It enables law enforcement to identify known terrorist material, regardless of its format or language, and determine which files require further scrutiny.
The technology uses Human Cognition's Terrorist Authored Material (TAM) Contraband Filter, which is built from a curated dataset of modern and historical terrorist material that has been human-verified as being produced by recognised terrorist groups. Suspect devices can be checked against this dataset using secure matching technology, allowing investigators to identify known content without having to manually search through large volumes of unrelated information.
The new capability draws on an archive of more than 3.3 million files circulating within terrorist online ecosystems over the last three decades. Of these, more than one million files have been identified as terrorist-authored material.
Human Cognition's approach ensures that only material verified as being produced by terrorist groups is included in the tool, providing law enforcement with access to an extensive collection of known terrorist content that can be identified quickly and at scale.
Importantly, the process does not expose unrelated personal information stored on the device. Instead, it matches files against known material held in the dataset, helping investigators quickly establish whether terrorist content is present while limiting collateral intrusion.