Are Awards Valuable to Your Security Career?

Everyone enjoys the positive recognition that comes from winning awards for a job well done. To security professionals seeking to advance their career, there is value in being recognized for achievements like this within your organization.

This is also true for being recognized as a noteworthy contributor who has positively impacted the profession. Awards that are external to your organization can impact your career, and some of these security industry awards are more universally recognized than others.

Award schemes have exploded in the past five years, though. The number of trophies one can win seems endless. Substantially more awards across many more categories are finding their way onto security professionals’ resumes and social media profiles. As a result, it is becoming more difficult to track those that are meaningful, significant and descriptive of someone’s skills, capabilities and achievements.

We wanted to better understand the agenda of these some of these newcomers to the security awards business. We started with a 30,000-foot view and then took an in-depth look at several that are trying hard to create buzz in the security community.

We learned that many of these programs are simply monetizing the awards circuit. They are aggressive promoters of their own business interests and target award winners who they perceive are security industry influencers. The goal is to appear to have an affiliation with the individual and the individual’s organization in the hope it lends an air of legitimacy to their awards business. This practice takes unfair advantage of security professionals who are seeking credible differentiators for their resume or social media profile.

This is a global problem not only for individuals…

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