In 2007, co-founders Christopher Ahlberg and Staffan Truvé, both Ph.D.s in computer science from Chalmers University of Technology, filed for Recorded Future’s first patent - Data Analysis System with Automated Query and Visualization Environment Setup. The patent laid the foundation for continuous collection and processing of data and information from sources across the open, deep, and dark web, facilitated by machine learning. Recorded Future was officially incorporated in 2009. The company received initial funding from Google and In-Q-Tel, as reported in a July 2010 introduction to Recorded Future published by Wired. Recognizing that its algorithms and visualization software matched needs within the intelligence community, Recorded Future entered the cyber threat intelligence market in January 2012. In 2014, the company launched Recorded Future Dark Web, integrating open and dark web sourcing as well as dark web forum access and analysis. In 2016, Recorded Future was named a partner for threat intelligence by Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, and Vencore GEOINT. In May 2017, Recorded Future introduced Insikt Group, the company’s threat intelligence research arm. The word “insikt” is Swedish, a nod to Recorded Future's co-founders, and means “insight.” Insikt Group is responsible for delivering analyst-generated assessments, insights, and recommended actions to customers and the public. In May 2019, New York-based private equity firm, Insight Partners, acquired Recorded Future for $780 million. In May 2019, New York-based private equity firm Insight Partners acquired Recorded Future for $780 million. In November 2019, the company opened a second office in Somerville with the goal of building a “campus” in the Davis Square area. Recorded Future currently employs more than 430 people around the world.
Services
Using what they call a "Temporal Analytics Engine," Recorded Future provides forecasting and analysis tools to help analysts predict future events by scanning sources on the internet, and extracting, measuring, and visualizing the information to show networks and patterns in the past, present, and future., the engine was described as "Web Intelligence Engine." Likewise, the Washington Post, in an article authored by Stewart Baker - the former General Counsel of the National Security Agency, which had described the company as a predictive analytics web intelligence firm deleted the term upon request of RF. The software analyzes sources and forms "invisible links" between documents to find links that tie them together and may possibly indicate the entities and events involved. Noah Schachtmann from WIRED – who first wrote about Google and the CIA both investing in RF – described the company in an interview as follows: "Recorded Future is a company that strips out from web pages the sort of who, what, when, where, why — sort of who’s involved, where are they going, what kind of events are they going to." Clients initially included the financial sector with quantitative investors, but since 2013 they have changed to businesses seeking cyber security, per Ahlberg, for example SITA, a global air transportIT company.
Organization
The company was founded in 2009 by Christopher Ahlberg and had 20 employees as of November 2011. Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested "under $10 million each" into the Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. Google published this on May 3, 2010 In-Q-Tel is an investment arm of the CIA. , it had partnerships with IBM, HP ArcSight, Cimation, Ethnographic Edge, Tiberium Security, and Malformity Labs LLC per its company profile published by Businessweek.
In November 2017, Recorded Future published analysis asserting that the Ministry of State Security influences or alters their National Vulnerability Database to coverup espionage activities. The analysis concludes "vulnerabilities commonly exploited by malware linked to Chinese APT groups" are inconsistent with CNNVD publication practices. The company presented further analysis in March 2018 at the Kaspersky Labs Analyst Summit, presenting evidence that the Chinese government retroactively changed the original publication dates.
In May 2014, Recorded Future released a report called "How Al-Qaeda Uses Encryption Post-Snowden." Part 2 of the report was released on August 1, 2014, supposedly with a strengthened "earlier hypothesis about Snowden leaks influencing Al-Qaeda’s crypto product innovation." On the same day National Public Radio aired Recorded Future claims of "tangible evidence" that Edward Snowden harmed national security by prompting terrorists to develop more sophisticated encryption programs. Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman criticized Recorded Future's report did not prove causation between Snowden's leak and improved encryption by al-Qaeda.
In 2011, Recorded Future reported, "... gaining online momentum for the Occupy Wall Street movement. When we look more carefully at influencers in this discussion using our Influencer Map, we find that Iran Press TV is the second largest influencer after the U.S. media!"
Controversies
In April 2015, a coding website accused Recorded Future of violating internet privacy by analyzing private Facebook messages, which it denied. The accusation was disproven when the assumed private link for private Facebook chat was found posted publicly online via a server log.
