The dark web is a secret platform accessed by criminals for trading, as it offers anonymity for financial transactions. It is one of three subsets of the internet—in all, there’s the surface web, the deep web and the dark web. Most of us normally use the surface web, which only makes up approximately three to four percent of all information available on the internet.
The rest of the content can be placed under the deep web category, which is filled with information that isn’t indexed by conventional search engines like Google.That content pertains to databases, encyclopedic catalogues, medical records, government resources, etc. A comprehensive table of deep web links has been posted on Dark Web News just to give you an idea of how extensive the content is.
You might consider that you can always access the entire internet but in reality, what you are accessing on a daily basis is only the tip of the iceberg. Search engines are only capable of surfing the surface web, which is only a tiny portion of the entire internet.
Big Data
Now, the dark web is a small division of the internet where drug trafficking, child pornography and other illegal trades and activities take place. These markets cannot be accessed using search engines. You need to use the Tor browser to surf the dark web.
Government security and surveillance organisations often use the dark web when looking for and passing on sensitive information. In the same way, journalists and media publications—such as The New Yorker and, more recently, Wired—are also using the Tor network to protect sources, such as whistleblowers, who are communicating sensitive or classified information.
There are hundreds of thousands of websites existing on the deep web and the dark web combined.This is the very concept of Big Data in its rawest form. The sites containing Big Data are completely encrypted and are usually used by criminals for carrying out their illegal activities on the dark web. However, the data that exists on the deep and dark web is accessible by anyone if you want to find it.
Big Data is a trove of complex information that is difficult to process. However, such data has the potential for revealing links and connections that can be further analysed.
Exploiting Big Data
Intelligence agencies in countries across the globe are increasingly using Big Data to fight against terror. Now, in the current sociopolitical climate, even the private sectors have started using Big Data to carry out their operations. It offers a lot of opportunity for financial advantage. New technology is now available for business leaders so that they can find valuable insights in the deep web by accessing Big Data.
Importance of Big Data
Big Data can offer critical insights that can be useful for the dark web industry. It can be analyzed and used to clarify assumptions and help industries make better-informed decisions.
Until now, only a passive approach has been used concerning data and analysis. This resulted in limited insights and, in some cases, even misleading insights. Accessing Big Data can help businesses identify significant patterns, using advanced tools and corresponding skill sets.
Dark Web Analytics
Very soon, such private business leaders will start using dark analytics, by focusing on dark data or Big Data. They will be able to find business and customer insights that traditional data does not reveal.
Such raw or undigested data could include many types of content. It could be video and audio files, images, documents, emails, text messages, and soon. Dark web analysis could also analyse the Big Data available in the deep web to help businesses examine content that is not indexed by Google and other search engines.
Data is Currency
Today, more data translates into more currency so that such businesses might hit the jackpot. In addition, the Big Data available on the dark web is continually increasing at an astounding rate. In fact, about 90 percent of the data generated on the surface web and the deep and dark web has been created only in the past few years. And the amount of data is steadily increasing every year.
As such, businesses are planning to analyse all the relevant data available on the dark web and extract actionable information from it. Such analytics have huge potential, as a bigger net is being cast to capture untapped information.
Valuable Information
By tapping into such unstructured data using new tools and techniques, businesses will be able to derive valuable information related to pricing, to their competitors and customer behaviour patterns.
Multinational companies will find deep web data to be very useful, as it might contain information connected with non-English speaking nations and markets.
Financial industries and law enforcement agencies can also use the information analysed from Big Data to find relevant information on which they can act. Almost any industry will be able to benefit from harnessing the potential of Big Data obtained from the deep web.
Competitive Advantage
For instance, retailers can use digital data-gathering techniques to get a better understanding of customer moods, based on factors such as their facial expressions or gestures. Similarly, amusement parks could get better insights by checking out security camera footage, seeing the number of people who visited by foot and the time at which they made the visits. Researchers in this sector can also find more crucial data through such Big Data analytics. However, it is not enough to merely get access to unstructured Big Data content. There will be thousands of file types, so the data has to be curated to analyse it. The businesses planning to use Big Data must have the proper tools for processing and compartmentalise data to get any useful and actionable details from it.
Help for Intelligence Agencies
Additionally, intelligence agencies can monitor Big Data on the dark web and uncover security threats in time. Investigators are now using the latest technologies to monitor social media and collect data, which is not normally available through traditional search engines. Some criminals operating on the dark web use social media for their operations, as these platforms allow them to communicate with those on the surface web.
Wrap Up
Although there is a lot of information to be analysed from the dark web through Big Data, the process of doing so is very challenging. In earlier times, such data was only unearthed and analysed by government security organisations and IT geeks. However, now Big Data is becoming an important source of intelligence that they can use for a competitive advantage. As such, the dark web has become a little brighter after access to Big Data has been achieved.
Additionally, web crawling technology is now being accessed by businesses and government organisations for offering competitive information. It can also be useful for curbing crime on the internet. It can help identify a zero-day attack or prevent a large-scale cyber attack, which is incredibly useful for stopping major economic pitfalls from crippling countries through widespread malware or ransomware attacks.
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