Jenny Radcliffe

Why organisations work with Jenny Radcliffe

• She has spent decades being paid to break into client buildings, networks and confidence; the briefings she gives boards are based on what worked, not what theory predicts.
• She runs Human Factor Security, the consultancy she founded to handle authorised physical-access and social-engineering testing for organisations that want their human layer stress-tested rather than surveyed.
• Her induction into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame placed her among a small group recognised for shifting the industry’s view of human risk from a training problem to a security discipline.
• People Hacker, published by Simon and Schuster, gives senior audiences a single readable account of how cons, pretexts and physical infiltration actually work inside corporate environments.
• She translates attacker behaviour into specific decisions about hiring, access, vendor management and culture, which is what a CISO’s report to the board usually leaves out.

Biography highlights

• Founder and director of Human Factor Security, the consultancy she set up in 2013 to focus on human-factor risk.
• Inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame in 2022 and delivered that year’s Hall of Fame Annual Lecture.
• Author of People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, Simon and Schuster.
• Host of the Human Factor podcast, awarded European Best Security Podcast at the 2018 European Blogger Awards.
• Multiple TEDx speaker on social engineering, deception and influence.
• Featured “HQ Hunter” on Channel 4’s Hunted, applying her OSINT and undercover tradecraft on screen.
• Regular keynote contributor at Infosecurity Europe, RANT, Cisco events, Trend Micro events and the PCI Security Standards Council Community Meetings.

Biography

The fastest way past most corporate security is to ring the doorbell. Jenny Radcliffe has spent her career proving it, working as an authorised social engineer hired to walk into offices, data centres and executive floors using nothing more than confidence, a cover story and a careful read of the people in front of her.

Human Factor Security, the consultancy she founded in 2013, runs that work as a discipline rather than a stunt. Clients commission live infiltration tests, pretext calls and on-site assessments; the findings then feed into board-level guidance on how culture, process and physical design create the openings attackers actually use.

Her book People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, published by Simon and Schuster, sets out the playbook in detail, and the Human Factor podcast has built a long-running audience among security and risk professionals, winning European Best Security Podcast at the 2018 European Blogger Awards. Television work on Channel 4’s Hunted and multiple TEDx talks have widened the audience well beyond the cyber industry.

In 2022 she was inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame and delivered the Hall of Fame Annual Lecture, “Facta Non Verba: Six Life Lessons from a Social Engineer”. For senior buyers, that recognition matters less than the underlying point: she is one of a small number of voices the security industry now treats as authoritative on the human side of the threat, and she briefs boards in the same plain language she uses to brief her own clients after a successful break-in.

Key speaking topics

• Social engineering and human-factor security
• Physical-access testing and corporate infiltration
• Fraud, scams and modern-day con tactics
• Security culture and workforce behaviour
• Deception, influence and non-verbal communication
• Insider threat and pretext attacks
• Board-level cybersecurity briefing

Ideal for

• CISOs, CSOs and heads of information security commissioning human-risk programmes
• Boards and executive committees reviewing cyber and operational resilience
• Heads of risk, compliance and governance overseeing fraud and insider threat
• Corporate security, facilities and HR leaders responsible for access, vetting and culture

Audience outcomes

• A clear picture of how attackers actually combine pretext, OSINT and physical access against organisations like theirs.
• Specific control points where human behaviour, not technology, decides whether an attack succeeds.
• Sharper questions to put to security, HR and facilities teams about access, vetting and incident response.
• A working vocabulary for discussing social engineering and human risk at board level.
• Confidence that security awareness can be redesigned around real attacker behaviour rather than generic training.