Selva Orejón

Early Life and Education

Selva Orejón was born in 1981 in Barcelona, Spain. She holds a degree in Communication Sciences from Ramon Llull University, with a specialization in advertising, public relations, and crisis management. She later pursued postgraduate studies in Intelligence at the Service of the State and the Company at the International University of Andalucía, and in Business Administration and Environment at the University of Cambridge.

Career

Orejón spent thirteen years as director of strategic communications at several Spanish and international companies, including Repsol, Grupo Planeta, Grupo Atofina, Holtzbrink Group, and Grupo Agrolimen. A formative period came during her role as director of the German social network SchülerVZ for Spain and Latin America, where she encountered her first cyber-attacks and extortion cases, which underscored the professional need to manage digital reputation as a distinct discipline.

Returning to Spain in 2007, she founded OnBranding, a digital reputation and cyber-research agency based in Barcelona. The agency grew to address smear campaigns targeting companies, the establishment of security shields, and the protection of individuals in digital environments — with particular focus on women who are victims of identity phishing on social networks.

In 2016, Orejón launched "Celebrandsec" to manage the digital reputation of celebrities, responding to a wave of account hacks on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, where compromised accounts were resold to criminal networks or used for extortion.

Judicial and Forensic Work

Also beginning in 2016, Orejón has served as a judicial expert collaborating with the Spanish administration of justice on matters of digital identity, online reputation, and the digital identity protection of protected witnesses. She is a member of the Catalan Association of Judicial and Forensic Experts. Her work involves ongoing cooperation with courts and law enforcement in the prosecution of digital crimes, including investigations into the dark web. As a result of this work, she has received death threats on multiple occasions.

Teaching

Orejón holds professorships and teaching roles at several universities and business schools in Spain. She has taught at ESIC since 2010, covering online reputation and online communities; at EAE Business School since 2011, covering e-commerce and online marketing; and at INESDI Digital Business School since 2012, where she also directs the postgraduate course in Cybersecurity. Since 2015 she has directed the Cybercrime Postgraduate Course at the CRIAP Institute. She has lectured in cybersecurity and cyber-intelligence at the Universitat de Barcelona's Instituto de Formación Continua IL3, and since 2019 has served as a professor of SOCMINT and social media intelligence at Francisco de Vitoria University.

Media Presence

Orejón is a regular contributor to radio and television programs on cybersecurity topics. Since 2016 she has appeared on the morning program "El matí a Ràdio 4" on RTVE, and since 2017 on "Expediente Marlasca" and "Equipo de investigación" on La Sexta. She has also contributed to programs on Catalonia Radio 2, RAC1, and Onda Cero.

Publications

Orejón has authored and co-authored several works in her field. Her publications include Social Media Business Intelligence (IMF, 2014), Relationship Marketing (Ediciones Roble, 2017), and Digital Identity and Socmint (2020). In 2020 she co-authored with Rubén Ríos Identidad digital: métodos de análisis y valoración de pérdida de imagen en la red, and contributed a chapter to Tratado de investigação criminal tecnológica, coordinated by Jorge Nogueira.