Factal's 2024 year in review - Factal Blog: News about global security, disaster response and crisis collaboration

The pace of global events in 2024 seemed to quicken every week, and there was no quiet corner of the map. Some days it was everything, everywhere, all at once. Factal editors verified and published more than 117,000 updates, making it our busiest year ever. The surge was driven by increasing instability worldwide, but also key changes in how information moves during breaking stories.

These were our most active topics for 2024 (Links are to Factal topics and for members only):

Conflict still dominated

Conflict, again, led our coverage in 2024 as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East had wide-ranging impacts all over the world. Russia gained ground in its slow and costly war in Ukraine, despite the Ukrainian army’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Israel’s bloody war against Hamas in Gaza pressed on while its army laid siege to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Twice this year we saw direct exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran. Factal’s coverage of Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, and Ukraine alone involved 40,000 editor-verified updates, and nearly 50,000 total updates if you include automated signals.

Older conflicts also resurfaced. Syrian rebels staged a shock offensive through northeastern Syria where HTS-led factions drove holes through regime positions in Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces. Within a week, dictator Bashar al Assad’s forces had abandoned their cause and Syria was in the hands of opposition forces. Sudan’s civil war continued to fuel a humanitarian emergency across the country, especially in Darfur. Just outside of our top 10 stories were numerous conflicts that continue to intensify in Haiti, India’s Jammu and Kashmir, Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar. Political tensions also simmered in northern (and southern) Somalia, Pakistan’s Balochistan and North Korea.

Conflicts also dominated our new-in-2024 Flash Briefings, exclusively available to Factal members. Six of the eight highest-attended Flash Briefings reviewed Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. US election security concerns and outcomes rounded out that top eight.

Other popular Briefings included topics as wide-ranging as the full invasion of Ukraine, Atlantic hurricanes, South Korea’s short-lived martial law and the mpox outbreak.

Politics went global

This was also the year of the global election supercycle: nearly 2 billion people voted in democratic elections in 2024. Across the world it was a very difficult year for incumbents, as election outcomes showed the staying power of some right-wing populist movements.

Donald Trump is back in the U.S., despite at least one assassination attempt and a felony conviction. UK’s Labour won in a landslide and there was constitutional chaos in France and (very briefly) martial law in South Korea. There are election results still being contested – and protested – in Venezuela, Mozambique and Georgia, among others.

With our partners Emergent Risk International, we host the free, no-membership-required Global Security Briefing – the most-attended virtual event in the global security industry. Every two weeks, the audience tuned in for strategic political analysis, risk intelligence and technology trends.

Register for the industry's largest recurring virtual event to get recordings

Safely using generative AI in risk intelligence and security was a recurring, popular theme. ERI analysts and Factal journalists also offered insight into global issues like the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, major port strikes, natural hazards, event security and what to watch for around various election outcomes. The GSB returns on Jan. 16.

Sources are splintering

It was a big year for changes in sourcing too, as social media and messaging platforms – and their users – navigated the political realities of an unstable world. Government limits on social platforms are expected to increase after Brazil’s ban on X set a precedent in August 2024. Ukraine is already considering limits on Telegram, while the US continues to explore a TikTok ban. News sources and eyewitnesses are now spread over a dozen sites which vary hugely by geography and political affiliation. Some mostly left-leaning X users flocked to Bluesky and Threads. Factal editors followed the stories wherever they went, while maintaining their focus on verification.

Verified major alerts from Factal are available on these social platforms where news breaks.
– X/Twitter
– Bluesky
– Mastodon
– Threads

Strategic partnership with International SOS

The most popular long-standing request from Factal members is to incorporate alerts into Travel Risk Management. In November we announced our new strategic partnership with International SOS.

We’ll soon launch a comprehensive travel management solution powered by International SOS data. Members will be able to monitor global travelers, track upcoming itineraries and see when critical events occur in proximity to both traveling employees and company assets in real time. Our new travel solution will live side-by-side in a seamless unified experience with Factal’s trusted risk intelligence, threat detection, brand monitoring and mobile safety solutions.

Factal hits the road

Factal representatives attended a record number of events in 2024. You may have seen us on stage at the OSAC Annual Briefing and AIRIP where Cofounder Cory Bergman spoke about using generative AI in intel; at GISF’s Spring Forum when Director of Product Elissa Olinsky was part of a panel about data ingest for NGOs; at an OSAC Academia event where Head of News Jillian Stampher spoke about covering international events in news poor environments; and at CSO 360 where editors Alex Moore and Agnese Boffano offered their insights on a panel about the dangers of misinformation. We also hosted events in DC, NYC, Orlando and Seattle. Whew!

Looking to meet us in 2025? Check our events page where we post all industry events and note where we’ll be in attendance.

Members met with Factal’s member success team during site visits and live trainings in several regions. These face-to-face conversations supplemented video training, chat and emails, helping us get to know the needs of the industry.

Innovative new features

Our product and technology teams were busy in 2024 launching new features including:

Expanded threat detection in Mentions to monitor social threats and brand risk
Real-time AI summaries sourced from verified incidents
Topic insights with trends and source data to expand your risk reporting
Redesigned Personal app and public sharing to help operators keep others safe
Four feature layers in ArcGIS for you to choose to scale Factal to your needs
And many more

Factal developers released dozens of additional quality improvements for members and editors, many of which were suggested by members. Some, you should never notice, like our more robust infrastructure to support our growth and serve the needs of global analysts and editors in a world that’s not slowing down.

Additional writing by Dave Clark

What is Factal?

Trusted by many of the world’s largest companies and nearly 300 humanitarian NGOs, Factal is a risk intelligence and collaboration platform that brings clarity to an increasingly noisy and uncertain world.

Powered by a hybrid of advanced AI and experienced journalists, Factal detects early signals, verifies critical details and assesses the potential impact at the speed of social media. From physical incidents and brand mentions to geopolitical developments, Factal offers the most trusted, real-time risk intelligence on the market.

Factal is also home to the largest security and safety collaboration network in the private sector. Members securely share information with other members in proximity to the same incident, both on Factal.com and the Factal app.

Learn more at Factal.com, and we’d love to hear from you.