Sofia Salazar, Senior Analyst
Sofia Salazar joined Hg in December 2021 as a Junior Open Source Intelligence Analyst, and was quickly promoted to Senior Analyst. She is responsible for foundational work in risk assessment and removal, monitoring, and social media/cyber/background investigations for Hg clients. Ms. Salazar conducts risk monitoring to ensure the safety and integrity of Hg clients’ lives, properties, and reputations by utilizing a suite of OSINT collection tools to quickly respond to client requests. She is adept at monitoring current events and information on the internet via social media platforms, geofencing, and the dark web. In 2020, Ms. Salazar was awarded the OSMOSIS Institute’s Open Source Rising Star of the Year award for her rapid vetting, assessment, and accurate dissemination of information regarding a Beirut explosion 20 minutes ahead of the first major U.S. breaking news alert.
Prior to joining Hg, Ms. Salazar served as an Intelligence Analyst and Operations Lead at SafeAbroad, where she monitored and assessed intelligence on international risks, evaluated trends in global security issues, and developed analytic products to improve intelligence collection and analysis while advancing the capabilities of her team. In this capacity, Ms. Salazar leveraged a mix of OSINT and SOCMINT tools to quickly glean data about ongoing incidents, frequently before they were reported by mainstream news, including security and terror threats, civil unrest, health outbreaks, and natural disasters.
Ms. Salazar graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of New Haven with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice and National Security Studies and a minor in Russian Studies. At New Haven, Ms. Salazar completed research on gun control and mass shootings with the Department of Homeland Security, continuing the research as her undergraduate thesis topic. Ms. Salazar speaks four languages, and is currently working towards earning a Master of Arts degree in Criminology at George Washington University, where she continues her research on the link between internet content and the occurrence of mass shootings.