Consec 2014, the annual conference of the Association of Security Consultants, was the occasion of the official presentation of the 75th Chartered Security Professional (CSyP) qualification, to Bob Martin, a board member of the ASC. He spoke later to Mark Rowe about how and why he went for CSyP.
Pictured left to right at Consec at the London Heathrow Marriott on Thursday, October 2 are Bob, Mike Bluestone, the former chairman of the Security Institute who led the team behind the CSyP, and Di Thomas of the institute, who manages the register of CSyPs on behalf of the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals.
While the typical ASC member is a former police officer, Bob’s background is commercial – he was for four decades with Shell. Since going independent in 2005, he has continued to work internationally. At Consec he wore the round CSyP badge on his lapel; a small thing, but with much meaning and work behind it. Di Thomas was among the Consec speakers, to describe the three-year-old qualification and how to go about gaining it – and holding on to it, because unlike an academic qualification such as a degree that you attain and then can forget about, the CSyP like other chartered professions requires the holder to do CPD (Continuous Professional Development). The aim, briefly, is to put security management on a par with the likes of accountancy, engineering and surveying – giving the holders something that managers in other fields can recognise as a ‘gold standard’, as one of the CSyPs, Nick Hymans of Credit Suisse, put it in a talk at IFSEC in June, featured in the September print issue of Professional Security.
There are, as Di Thomas explained, two ways to seek the CSyP – either way, you have to show practical, ‘operational security’ experience, besides providing relevant references. Either you have a degree (in a ‘security-related’ discipline, or have any degree and have some security-related vocational qualification besides) or you don’t, and you show your competence by a ‘portfolio’, in other words a dissertation or essay of 4000 to 12,000 words. Bob went for that latter, non-academic route.
For those who went straight into the police or military or indeed private security from school, or who for whatever reason don’t have a degree, like Bob, he appreciated that you didn’t have to have a university academic background to gain the CSyP. Why then did Bob put himself through it, given all he’s done? “Those who know me – I have always been an advocate of professionalism in the industry. I have been in the industry now, what, crikey’ – he laughed to himself to think of how long it was, ’30 years, and I believe that we are a profession, that is worthy of recognition. So having a mechanism that we can demonstrate our professionalism is a step in the right direction.’
As a CSyP he can commend the qualification to other people, whether they are academically or practically qualified to go for it; and after his long career, Bob regards CSyP as ‘a real cherry on the icing’, that shows what he’s achieved.
What of the nuts and bolts of going for CSyP? Being a non-academic Bob did find it a challenge to understand the academic requirement of the qualification, and here he was glad of the mentoring of Mike Bluestone, ‘who was one of the first advocates of course of this whole thing’. As Bob admits, while the actual process, he said, was easy, step by step, the CSyP is not easy to achieve; ‘but that makes it all the more worthwhile when it is achieved’.
What of the interview in front of two ‘assessors’, when the applicant can give a 15-minute presentation – doesn’t it rather mean you put yourself on the line? Professional Security asked. Bob agreed: “The interview was quite challenging in as much as I am used to being the other side of the table. But it has to be said that the interviewers were very understanding.”
For more on the qualification, visit the institute website – https://www.security-institute.org/rcsp/more_information.
For a list of the CSyP holders (in alphabetical order) visit https://www.security-institute.org/rcsp/list_chartered_security_professionals.
