Security managers and consultants seek qualifications for all sorts of reasons. For Barry Walker gaining the title Certified Protection Professional (CPP) from the American Society for Industrial Security was a matter of personal pride.
Barry Walker, Senior Security Adviser with London-based TPS Consult, has become the UK point of contact for the CPP. While not knocking alternatives to the CPP, such as degrees, he told Professional Security: ‘It [the CPP] has become one of the most widely recognised qualifications, simply because it is a practical qualification. It’s not like a degree, it requires knowledge of quite a wide variety of subjects – for example, physical security, electronic security, personal security, investigations, substance abuse, and English law on this side of the Atlantic. You can’t take this exam until you have had a minimum of nine years’ experience, so it’s looking at the experienced security professional.’ It’s a self-help course; when you sign up, you get a reading list (largely of US books) and study guide from ASIS. As a rule, it takes about a year of study to lead to the exam. In the USA there are several seminar groups a year; in the UK, only one last year that led to the exam in November, at Loughborough University conference centre. At the residential seminar, already-qualified CPPs assist voluntarily. Barry describes the exam: 225 multi-choice questions, each with a choice of four answers. Candidates’ papers are computer-read. The pass mark is 80 per cent. Security is tight at the exam room: you have to produce ID to enter, and there are outside, independent invigilators. As for costs, you pay $200 to register for the exam, and when you add the residential course and textbooks, total costs can be several times that. ASIS does however run a library so that you can borrow many of the course books. That said, as Professional Security reported in September, ASIS’ 2001 Employment Survey found – admittedly, ASIS and this study are US-based – that on average security managers add thousands to their annual salary if they have the CPP. Barry adds: ‘If you look at job adverts, more and more, even in this country, they are saying ‘CPP preferred’. The exam, too, is American-based, with US terminology that candidates have to learn.
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Why did such a senior security figure as Barry – with nearly 20 years’ experience in Army intelligence and security, and for the last 15 years working in commercial security – feel he had to go through the CPP procedure’ ‘I got very frustrated at not having my experience recognised, because there was no qualification; and to get a CPP has achieved that aim. For a younger man, I would say it is going to be an absolute essential, if they want to get on in the security world.’ As Barry concludes: the qualification gives you a legitimacy in the eyes of your clients. If engineers or members of other professions can have letters after their name, why not security professionals?
