Certifications and Your Security Career

The public sector continues to provide a significant talent feed to the corporate security profession. These qualified professionals often have competencies, a skill set and experience that would position them to successfully transition into private sector roles. However, they frequently ask us if a particular certification could improve their marketability going into a corporate setting.

There is no is no easy answer.

Our industry as a profession has historically not done a particularly good job of defining various job functions in a realistic fashion. This is further complicated by the arbitrary nature of position descriptions for security leadership roles that are often simply a list of operational activities.

Requirements in security job listings often have no relevance to the role they are recruiting for. As a result, certifying agencies have created exams that measure memorization of knowledge in areas that are not in alignment with the true essence of the accountabilities expected of a security executive.

We track over 60 certifications related to corporate security and investigations, an additional 15 related to business continuity, crisis management and disaster recovery. There are 20 more related to cyber security.

Which one of these certifications would set a candidate apart? Most hiring managers do not know and that is why you often see security jobs advertised with a long string of unrelated certifications required.

Certifications in general were designed to measure someone’s knowledge in a specific practice area. These tend to be in narrowly defined areas of expertise and require a specified level of continued education which may or may not be relevant to the certification awarded or points required to maintain the credential.

Continuing education through certification programs are viable ways advance the sectors they support. Solid certification programs that have become standards…

While you are here sign up for SMR’s job announcements and have the latest security jobs delivered to your in box. If you haven’t already, join our security talent community so we can reach out to you directly.