Jenny Radcliffe – also known as "The People Hacker" – is a leading social engineer, using her unique skills to help organizations find their security flaws by bypassing security systems through a mixture of psychology, con-artistry, cunning and guile. We sat down after Jenny’s keynote at ISC2 Security Congress to talk some more…

The ISC2 Podcast is a regular series of interviews and discussions with members and key people in and around the cybersecurity industry where we find out more about their career stories, experiences, emerging cybersecurity challenges and technologies and more.

The podcast is a forum to share new ideas and broaden the conversation within the ISC2 membership and with the wider cybersecurity community.

For episode four of this series, we met with acclaimed social engineer Jenny Radcliffe. Known as “The People Hacker”, we discuss a variety of aspects of social engineering and exploiting holes in the public’s security awareness.

Jenny has received many industry awards and was inducted into the prestigious InfoSec Hall of Fame in 2022. She has also been named as one of the top 30 female cyber security leaders in 2022 by SC Magazine, one of the top 25 Women in Cyber by IT Security Guru, and as a Top 50 Women of Influence in Cyber multiple times. She was nominated in seven categories for the 2021 Security Serious Awards in 2021 including the prestigious “Godmother of Security” award in 2020 winning the “Most Educational Security Blog" for her show The Human Factor podcast interviewing industry leaders, bloggers, experts, fellow social engineers and con-artists about all elements of security and preventing people from becoming victims of malicious social engineering.

We discuss just how easy it can be to enter restricted parts of a building with nothing more than a clipboard and a high-viz vest, and how looking and sounding the part is often enough to convince many members of society that you must be in the right place.

We also look at what happens when these approved intrusion attempts don’t go to plan.

  • If you don’t already have a pass, on-demand passes for sessions from ISC2 Security Congress can be purchased here
  • Our webinar on social engineering “Hack the Brain: Social Engineering Innovation in 2023” can be streamed here
  • Details of ISC2 Security Congress 2024 in Las Vegas, October 14-16 2024 can be found here