By Andréas Hobbelin · 2026-10-12
EDD vs OSINT: what is the difference?
Open-source intelligence is an input to Enhanced Due Diligence, not a substitute for it.
OSINT collects, EDD concludes
OSINT gathers publicly available information: registries, news, court records, social media. EDD assesses that information against a risk methodology, weighs its reliability and reaches a documented decision.
Reliability matters
Community-maintained sources and search results are leads, not facts. They must be verified against official or primary sources before they affect a risk rating.
Defensibility
A regulator or auditor asks why a decision was taken. EDD answers with evidence lineage, methodology version and rationale; a pile of search results does not.