Much of the data that can be accessed using Maltego Graph (both Desktop and Browser) and Maltego Search is public data, and largely falls in the category of open-source intelligence. Some examples of public data include network information, such as DNS lookup, public knowledge like Wikipedia, and public government records such as property holdings.
 

 
There are data sources that are provided by commercial companies. Their business model is built on collecting or providing convenient access to 3rd party APIs (e.g. Instagram or Facebook). They provide access to data that is difficult or time-consuming to collect, and then charge users to access their wealth of information.

Through data partnerships, Maltego can provide users with access to these data sources. Examples of this data include company data, breach data that has been in past data leaks, and profile and user information collected from social media.
 

 
Many Maltego users have data of their own that they want to analyse using Maltego Graph. Some of these users prefer to use Maltego Graph (Desktop) to visualize their data or to use other starting points to query against their data and look for matches.

Examples of such data include a cybercrime investigation that uses internal data integrated into Maltego Graph (Desktop) to cross-check data found on the Internet, a social media platform that brings their own internal data to investigate a user for fraud, or a cybersecurity team that uses a database of malware hashes to confirm that none of those files are present on their network or devices.

Currently, integrating internal data is only possible using Maltego Graph (Desktop). 

 
Maltego Data is fully integrated into Maltego Search and Maltego Graph capabilities. The way these tools work follows these three steps:

1. Input: You add your starting piece of information into the tool and send a query (e.g. an email address, phone number, alias, etc.).
2. Query: You send a query for data related to your input information. Maltego then searches for data that matches your input against different sources.
3. Output: Maltego displays the returned data back into your tool in a format you can easily visualize.

 
Each query sent with Maltego Search or Graph is run in real time, compared against the data sources that exist in that moment. This means that, if anything in the original data changes, these changes will reflect in the results you receive.

As an example, the same query run at different times can yield very different results. To avoid losing any important data, make sure your investigations are being saved. While Maltego Search and Maltego Graph (Browser) automatically save your results, you need to manually save your graphs on Maltego Graph (Desktop).