13th and 14th February, 2026
Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki Finland
Introduction to Private Intelligence: Legal corporate espionage and how to protect yourself
Ben Gladnikoff
Corporate espionage isn’t just something governments or criminals do. These days, it is a service you can hire. Clean, legal, and often very effective. Private intelligence firms work behind the scenes of lawsuits, M&A deals, internal disputes, or just old fashioned IP-theft. Their job is to get information others don’t want shared. Sometimes that means digging into open sources. Sometimes it means using fake identities, social engineering, and well-prepared phone calls.
In this talk, I’ll give a practical introduction to how the private intelligence world works, based on over a decade of first-hand experience. I’ll break down a real case where legal deception was used to gather evidence that helped swing a court case. You’ll see how targets are selected, how approaches are built, and why the person who leaks the critical detail is often someone with no idea they’re involved. If you work with sensitive information, or near someone who does, this is a threat you need to understand.
In this talk, I’ll give a practical introduction to how the private intelligence world works, based on over a decade of first-hand experience. I’ll break down a real case where legal deception was used to gather evidence that helped swing a court case. You’ll see how targets are selected, how approaches are built, and why the person who leaks the critical detail is often someone with no idea they’re involved. If you work with sensitive information, or near someone who does, this is a threat you need to understand.
Ben Gladnikoff
Ben Gladnikoff is the Finland Country Representative and a senior analyst at Look Closer, a leading advisory firm in integrity due diligence and complex investigations. He has over 15 years of experience in the intelligence field, including a decade in private intelligence firms managing OSINT and HUMINT operations across multiple regions. His work has included leading teams of analysts and human intelligence specialists with backgrounds in national intelligence services.
With experience working for threat actors, Ben now helps companies protect themselves against the same capabilities he once deployed. Private intelligence mirrors the methods of state actors and organised crime, and the threat from all three is growing. His work focuses on helping organisations recognise and defend against targeted information gathering, insider recruitment, and reputational attacks.
