The onset of autumn is also the start of the academic year; a good time to reflect on where security management stands in terms of professional development. The opportunities to better yourself with qualifications have never been more varied โ so varied as to be bewildering, Mark Rowe writes.
An ISRM (Institute of Strategic Risk Management) webinar of September 22 heard from gamified trainers Paul Mitchell and Kyle Cruickshank, who are making board and card games for emergency planning, for the real and (in development) cyber worlds. They met while taking a masters degree at Brunel University, in war-gaming and resilience planning. A generation ago, such a detailed degree subject would have been outlandish. It only reflects the ever-growing specialising in work. Academia, that once had a take it or leave it air, for 18 to 21-year-olds only, has had to adapt to the market. Itโs no longer a clichรฉ to say that learning is for life (if it ever were), given that AI and other tech is coming on stream, at seemingly an ever accelerating pace; well before retirement, you are expected to grasp things (knowing your way around a mobile phone) for work and leisure, that werenโt invented when you were at school, let alone werenโt taught at school.
Hence a dizzying range of courses โ not only topics, but options in terms of length, and location โ for the security or indeed any manager. To give only a couple. For the April 2026 edition of Professional Security Magazine, we were the guest of Mark Baker of Canary Wharfโs security, at 1 Canada Square. Besides the corporate tenants there is University College London, whose main campus is in central London, but whose school of management is based in Docklands, to more conveniently serve corporate learners. ย For instance, an executive certificate in resilience leadership and crisis management. A programme runs over two and a half days (October 26 to 28), and taught not only by UCL academics but practitioners such as Stephen Parkinson, group head of safety, security and resilience at Sky. To reflect the pressing nature of the subject, you donโt have to hang around for the next academic year; registration runs until October 18.
Relevant
Informa Connect Academy โin partnership with Liverpool John Moores Universityโ run courses on counter-terrorism. James Williams is the programme leader for the Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism & Law Enforcement Studies Programme. He said last month: โYou will be learning from experts who have real operational experience into the content of your modules. We have lecturers with backgrounds in intelligence, policy advisory, academic research, military intelligence and counter-terrorism policing. We want you to be able to apply your new knowledge to your own role on a daily basis, however we have modules that cater to all needs.
โBuild the depth you need at your own pace as we have deliberately structured this programme, so that you can study around your role and personal life. You have to option to study a single module, if you are interested in completing just one module. You can decide to take route on a more focused pathway, if you want to broaden your competence and knowledge across several related areas of counter-terrorism and law enforcement practice. You can also complete eight modules that will provide you with specialist knowledge across the board.โ Again, that course allows for specialising, for instance in terrorist financing; or Northern Ireland. Again, those giving the course are as likely to have a background as a doer as an academic; which offers the prospect that whatever field you have gone into, if you have shown an appetite for academia, you can still be a practitioner and as a sideline be paid to teach. There’s a word for it, ‘pracademic’. Indeed, to marry the two serves to keep yourself (and thereby the academic institution) relevant. To return to the ISRM, arguably the premier pracademic in this space is the Institute’s founder Dr David Rubens, who regularly trains, in the UK and abroad, for example a Level 5 Award in Urban Resilience and Major City Management.
Blurring
It does show something of a blurring of the old โ until the online world disrupted everything โ way of gaining work-related qualifications. Time was you went to university from 18 to 21 or 22, got a job, and, if you were in security management whether or not you had joined it after serving in the military or police, you might take a masterโs degree in risk and security management, available from Leicester, and Loughborough, and then Portsmouth: a handful of UK institutions (the United States was ahead of the UK in terms of offerings). Then came a generation that took a first degree in a general subject, then a masterโs related to their chosen occupation. The ever greater choices of course โ should the ambitious security manager go for an MBA? โ imply that in your later 20s, with a first degree under your belt and further degree for entry to private security, you have an idea about where you want to be in ten or 20 years, whether a chief security officer for a corporate, or committing to a branch of security โ aviation, or healthcare, or financial services โ or specialise beyond security management into intel, fraud prevention, or resilience or emergency planning. Part of the decision will be what you want most โ job satisfaction, or money or travel. The trick, then, is to know what qualifications to take, if any. Part of the decision will be what you can afford (do you save towards a mortgage, enjoy holidays while you can, or spend on courses, or indeed pay off your student loan?!) and how much you rate improving yourself, whether as an end in itself or for your employability. Or, you seek professional standing by becoming a member of an industry body, which may offer training; that UCL course for example is run ‘in partnership with’ the Business Continuity Institute (BCI).
King’s
King’s College London likewise is offering with audit and advisory firm PwC’s Crisis Leadership Centre a two and a half day programme of ‘instruction, interactive sessions and practical exercises’ for ‘Senior Executives in Crisis Leadership’.
Cost
As for cost, that UCL course is ยฃ2500, while King’s’ is ยฃ2950; which while a fraction of a typical part-time, two-year masters degree course, let alone a three-year first degree, is not that much more than the main course in mind for the venue and building security sector for the next few years, the SFJ Awards Level 3 Award in Counter-Terrorism Protective Security and Preparedness, as part of meeting Martynโs Law, which has a โtotal qualification timeโ, whether in front of a lecturer or your own reading, of 90 hours. Shorter courses suit universities as theyโre relatively more profitable than undergraduate degree courses, that demand the expensive infrastructure of libraries and lecture halls on a physical campus, that working adults taking a short course neednโt ever see.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Liverpool John Moores University campus.
