QUICK FACTS Website http://deb.radcliff.com Contact Email: deb@radcliff.com Recent Work Breaking the glass firewall Keep Hackers out of your Website SMPD blue Verisign's 'SiteFinder' finds privacy hullabaloo Appeal in bug disclosure case The Hackers Who Broke Windows

Deb Radcliff

Newly elected FBTW president Deb Radcliff

While investigating the life of computer hacker Kevin Mitnick for a best-selling book, Radcliff's phones were "phreaked" by Mitnick's friends, her lines were tapped by the Feds, and her e-mail read by all of them. Those experiences in 1994 and 1995 taught her a valuable lesson in digital risk that remains with her to this day as she writes about high tech crime and security for businesses and consumers.

Radcliff's 1996 article for Byte Magazine titled "Barbarians at the Firewall" was used to train the FBI's new computer crime agents. She's since covered computer security and online crime for Upside, InformationWeek, Computerworld, Infoworld, Network World, IndustryWeek, SecurityFocus and most recently for consumer magazines including Better Homes and Gardens. Her work has been picked up regularly by CNN, The Register, Department of Defense publications and thousands of other online sites. An annual speaker at West Point Military Academy, she's also spoken on business radio news hours in Los Angeles and Vancouver, presented at the University of North Texas' cyber crime prevention outreach, and spoken at H.O.P.E. (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York.

She's won four prestigious awards for her work, including two Jesse H. Neal Awards by the American Business Press: one for best individual feature for her cover story, "Hackers, Terrorists and Spies" (Software Magazine, 1998) and a second for group reporting, best news story, Computerworld, "Wireless LANs: Trouble in the Air," 2003. The Software Magazine story also won best regional and national feature by the American Society of Business Press Editors.

Before working on the Mitnick book, Radcliff wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (a New York Times paper), and other newspapers and business journals. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from San Jose State University where she graduated with honors. She is currently writing a book about her experiences investigating online crime.