The Defender's Advantage Cyber Snapshot Issue 2

How Information Operations Lead to Disinformation and Misinformation

Information operations (IO) refers to the use of coordinated, inauthentic online assets and/or deceptive tactics to influence target audiences. As a tactic, IO has been growing in scale, frequency and scope during the past few years, as nationstates and other groups around the world seek new ways to influence or manipulate target audiences.

Mandiant tracks a range of activity across the online influence spectrum to generate intelligence that contributes to the exposure and mitigation of threats that result from IO. For years, Mandiant has identified and reported on IO campaigns judged to be operating in support of, or on behalf of nation-state actors, including Belarusian, Russian, Chinese and Iranian campaigns as well as information operations conducted by actors unaffiliated with any nation-state. Our primary focus is to identify, analyze and expose efforts to manipulate target information environments using deceptive tactics.

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