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What the system should detect—and what it cannot decide
Define the target as potentially harmful coordinated behavior, not merely false content or unpopular speech. NATO defines information threats as intentional, harmful, manipulative, coordinated activities by state or non-state actors with an actual or potential negative impact. That definition sets an analytical scope; it does not justify labeling dissent, a mistaken claim, or a widely shared viewpoint as a campaign.
Analyze how sources behave as well as what they say. The European External Action Service (EEAS) describes foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) analysis as examining actors and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) they use to structure, execute, and adapt activity, alongside narrative analysis. A matching claim can be shared organically, and a suspicious-looking pattern can have a benign explanation. Detection should therefore produce a signal for assessment, not a verdict about intent, identity, state direction, or impact.
NATO’s approach, endorsed by Allied Defence Ministers on 18 October 2024, puts the purpose plainly: “Identifying, monitoring, analysing and assessing information threats is the basis for informed responses.” The system is useful when it supports an informed decision in time—not simply when it generates an alert.
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Build the capability in six stages
1. Set the mandate and safeguards
Before collecting data, document the operational scope and the limits of the program. Decide which potential harms, audiences, languages, geographies, platforms, and time horizons matter to your organization. Specify what qualifies as a signal, who may receive an alert, what decisions the alert can inform, and what activity is outside the mandate.
- Assign local owners for legal review, privacy, security, analysis, and incident response.
- Set access controls, retention rules, documentation requirements, and escalation authority with those owners; no universal legal basis or retention period applies to every organization and jurisdiction.
- Keep observation separate from inference and attribution in both case records and external communications.
- Record how the system will handle uncertainty, corrections, and challenges to an assessment.
NATO and European Commission material supports a risk-based, rights-respecting and collaborative approach, but does not prescribe a universal alert threshold or governance design. Resolve those decisions locally before a high-pressure incident.
2. Map sources and visibility gaps
Inventory information the organization can lawfully access, such as public posts and websites, platform transparency or research data, public statements, media reporting, civil-society and fact-checking reports, and alerts from trusted partners. NATO calls for a broad variety of sources and an integrated picture. The European Commission describes improved researcher access to non-personal, anonymized, aggregated, or manifestly public platform data, with processes for more sensitive access.
Maintain a source register rather than treating any feed as a complete view of the information environment. For each source, record:
- Platforms, languages, geography, and types of material covered.
- Access conditions, update cadence, historical depth, and known gaps—including limited visibility into restricted or closed spaces.
- How observations are timestamped, preserved, and reproduced for later review.
- Who can access the source and what privacy or handling restrictions apply.
A single platform API or vendor feed cannot be assumed to represent activity across platforms, languages, geographies, or closed groups. Make those blind spots visible in each assessment that depends on them.
3. Monitor narratives and behavior in parallel
Track relevant narratives, claims, framing, links, images, and calls to action. At the same time, look for behavior that may reveal coordination: synchronized posting, repeated amplification relationships, account or source clusters, shared technical infrastructure, or centralized content production. The November 2024 EEAS OSINT guidelines identify shared IP addresses, devices, configurations, and centralized content production as strong coordination indicators. They are leads to investigate, not proof of malicious coordination.
Record which observations support or weaken each hypothesis. Similar wording may reflect ordinary discussion; a shared technical feature may have a benign explanation. Automation or synthetic media can be relevant to an assessment, but neither alone establishes that an operation is inauthentic or coordinated. The European Commission’s Code framework includes fake accounts, bot-driven amplification, impersonation, and malicious deepfakes among behaviors to monitor; signatories periodically review TTPs.
4. Structure the assessment
Use NATO’s ABCDE elements as a consistent frame for collection notes, case records, and reporting. The 2026 description of the EU Knowledge Hub’s coordinated inauthentic behaviour detection framework adds a complementary focus on coordination, authenticity, impact, and source characteristics, including automation and AI.
Rank #3
| Element | Question for the analyst | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| Actor | Which accounts, sources, organizations, or other entities are observed? | Observable identifiers and relationships; distinguish them from any unconfirmed identity or attribution. |
| Behavior | What pattern of activity or TTPs is visible? | Timing, amplification, coordination signals, and relevant technical observations, with source and timestamp. |
| Content | What narratives, claims, framing, or calls to action are being circulated? | Representative material and its context, rather than a claim about truth or intent by itself. |
| Degree | How extensive is the observed activity? | Observed reach or scale, the period and sources measured, and any coverage limitations. |
| Effect | What actual or potential consequences are supported by evidence? | Observed or plausible effects, separated from unmeasured impact or prediction. |
Keep raw observations, analyst interpretation, confidence, and attribution in separate fields. This makes it easier for another analyst or recipient to see which conclusions rest on direct evidence and which remain hypotheses.
5. Triage transparently and review consequential cases
Use a documented rubric to decide what merits analyst attention and what warrants escalation. Useful dimensions include coordination strength, source authenticity, reach or degree, likely or observed effect, time sensitivity, confidence, and potential harm. Treat these as distinct dimensions rather than compressing them prematurely into a single label.
- State what evidence supports and weakens the coordination hypothesis.
- Note alternative explanations and the visibility limits of the sources used.
- Escalate high-consequence or low-confidence cases for additional review rather than allowing an opaque score to decide.
- If you use a score, document its purpose, calibration data, known blind spots, and human override process.
No validated universal numeric threshold or detection-accuracy figure is established by the cited material. Do not present a locally chosen score as validated science or imply that it predicts a campaign’s effects.
6. Make alerts actionable
Decide recipient lists and response expectations before an incident. Separate an unreviewed watch signal, an analyst-reviewed warning, and an assessment approved for external sharing. An alert should make clear what decision is requested and what the evidence does—and does not—establish.
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- What was observed, and when and where it was seen.
- Sources, relevant timestamps, and a record of how the evidence can be checked.
- The evidence for coordination, observations that cut against it, and plausible alternatives.
- Assessment of potential or observed effect, confidence, and important coverage gaps.
- The action or decision requested, the deadline if one exists, and the appropriate recipients.
Share only the information each recipient needs, preserve provenance, and make uncertainty legible. NATO describes early warning and stakeholder alerts as part of prevention; the European Commission describes an election-period rapid response mechanism bringing platforms, civil society organizations, and fact-checkers together.
Connect warning to response and learning
An alert is not a response plan. Before an incident, agree which options are available to the organization and who has authority to use them. NATO’s approach places early warning within a broader cycle of understanding, prevention, containment or mitigation, and recovery.
- Prevention: Continue monitoring or privately notify relevant stakeholders when the evidence supports a watch or warning.
- Containment or mitigation: Consider coordinated statements, corrections, debunking, countering narratives, or public attribution where evidence and mandate support the action.
- Recovery: Assess which vulnerabilities were exploited, what sources or capabilities were missing, and whether the chosen response reduced harm.
Assess the risk that a public response could amplify the material. Choose an action proportionate to the evidence, potential harm, and authority available; preserve the distinction between a supported finding and an unresolved attribution question.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Select tools against your operational needs
Choose collection and analysis methods by testing whether they support the work your analysts must do—not by treating a tool’s output as an assessment. Compare alternatives on the following criteria:
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- Coverage: Platforms, languages, geography, public versus restricted data, and historical depth.
- Evidence quality: Provenance, timestamps, reproducibility, and access to underlying observations.
- Analytical fit: Narrative tracking, network analysis, behavioral synchronization, authenticity, impact assessment, and cross-platform linkage.
- Governance: Lawful access, privacy safeguards, retention, user permissions, and audit trail.
- Operational fit: Alert latency, analyst workload, interoperability, export formats, and incident workflow.
- Validation: Known error modes, representative evaluation data, human-review controls, and explainability.
The EEAS OSINT guidelines name DNSlytics as a web-based DNS and domain research service, and Maltego, Cytoscape, and NodeXL as tools for investigating or visualizing relationships. These are examples, not endorsements or evidence of comparative performance. Technical-indicator research requires expertise and may raise privacy concerns; any use should fit the organization’s mandate and safeguards.
What must be decided locally
The system’s boundaries and consequences depend on the organization and jurisdiction. Legal, privacy, security, and operational owners need to settle the decisions that published frameworks do not universalize:
- Which harms and populations fall within the mandate, and what activity is explicitly out of scope?
- What legal basis and privacy safeguards govern collection, access, sharing, and retention?
- What evidence is enough for a watch signal, an analyst-reviewed warning, or an external assessment?
- Who reviews high-consequence cases, approves public attribution, and can challenge or correct an assessment?
- Which recipients can take a useful action, and how will the organization evaluate whether the alert and response helped?
The European Commission reports that the 2022 Code of Practice was integrated as a Code of Conduct under the Digital Services Act on 13 February 2025; its page was last updated on 2 July 2026. That framework informs the monitoring and cooperation context, but it does not replace local decisions about legal authority, thresholds, or system design.
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