How to be Successful in Corporate Security Management

If you aspire to lead the development of physical and/or cyber security programs to protect the nation's critical infrastructure after serving in law enforcement, intelligence, or the military, then you first need to learn the language, operations, financial decision-making, supply chain, and customer service needs of industry (e.g. Chemical, Health Care, Energy, Transportation).

You’ll then be able to blend your government-acquired homeland security skills with your business knowledge to create strategies for protecting critical infrastructure, people, and assets, while also being a value-added contributor to achieving essential business objectives. 

Those who don't recognize that corporate security’s purpose is to apply security management to overcome business risks while simultaneously enabling the organizations to meet its effectiveness, efficiency, and reputational goals, will have a less than satisfying corporate career.

Protecting critical infrastructure from 21st-century risks has become increasingly difficult and complex as threats converge and manifest in unexpected ways. Nevertheless, CEOs still expect their CSOs and CISOs to create effective risk-based security management that protects the critical infrastructure organization and quantifiably supports the organization's goals and objectives. To make matters worse, CEOs frequently expect a bifurcated level of performance even when there is a shortage of those who are skilled business executives as well as homeland security practitioners.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Sam Houston State University's new Institute for Homeland Security (SHSU-IHS) has been created to meet the immediate professional development training and applied research needs of critical infrastructure organizations.

To that end, SHSU-IHS has been conducting surveys and focus groups with critical infrastructure thought leaders to ascertain industries' immediate training and research needs and what training programs would have the most significant positive impact on protecting critical infrastructure from 21st-century risk while also being a valued contributor to the business.

Based on industries’ input, SHSU-IHS has created a professional certificate program that includes the following topics:

• Physical and cyber security organizational convergence strategies
  
  
• Executive business/security leadership
  
  
• Understanding critical infrastructure business operations
  
  
• Security management as a means for achieving business goals
  
  
• Transformative security technologies for critical infrastructure
  
  
• Security risk-analysis methods, including Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Indications & Warnings (I&W)
  
  
• Crisis and Resilience management strategies for critical infrastructure
  
  
• Benefits and watchouts of using Security Drones & Robots for ISRC2
  
  
• How Multi-National, Critical Infrastructure can protect intellectual Property from Theft and Espionage
  
  
• The risk that matters: Effective management of the "Insider Threat."

The above professional development training courses are generally 2.5 hours in length, and the certificate consists of 6 courses. Courses 1 through 4 are required, and students can choose any two (2) of the remaining six (6) topics to fulfill the certificate requirements.

The SHSU-IHS certificate program provides security practitioners with a credential to confirm the holder is knowledgeable in how to blend homeland security, risk analysis, business management, and private sector leadership skills to protect critical infrastructure effectively while simultaneously adding quantifiable value to meeting essential infrastructure objectives.

Sponsored by SHSU