Deborah Hurley is the Principal of the consulting firm she founded in 1996, which advises companies, governments, international organizations, civil society, and foundations on advanced science and technology policy. At Harvard University, she is a Fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Global Innovation Policy Fellow of the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH). Hurley is a Senior ICT Expert on the Infrastructure Advisory Panel of the Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility in Sydney, Australia, and Arbitrator, EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework.

At the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Paris, France, she identified emerging legal, economic, social and technological issues related to information and communications technologies, biotechnology, environmental and energy technologies, nanotechnology, technology policy, and other advanced technology fields. Hurley wrote the seminal report on information security for the OECD member nations and was responsible for drafting, negotiation and adoption of the OECD Guidelines for the Security of Information Systems. She also initiated the OECD activities on cryptography technologies and policy in the early 1990s. Hurley organized annual meetings on protection of personal data and privacy, including reviews of the OECD Guidelines for the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data, privacy enhancing technologies, protection of health data, and rule-making related to privacy, such as legislation and its implementation and enforcement at regional, national and sub-national levels, private sector codes of conduct, and standards. Prior to joining the OECD, she practiced computer and intellectual property law in the United States.

Hurley has served on many boards and committees, including for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), U.S. Department of State, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences Research Council, and Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). She carried out a Fulbright study of intellectual property protection and technology transfer in Korea. She is the author of Pole Star: Human Rights in the Information Society, “Information Policy and Governance” in Governance in a Globalizing World, “Taking the Long Way Home: The Human Right of Privacy,” in Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions, and other publications. Hurley received the Namur Award of the International Federation for Information Processing in recognition of outstanding contributions, with international impact, to awareness of social implications of information technology.