Security Executive Blog

Some enterprises may want to get into the business of government contracting, but may not know where to begin. To help with classified contracts and contractor requirements I'll be posting excerpts of my upcoming book due out next summer. This first post from the book addresses the appointment of a Facility Security Officer. Under the national industrial security program, a contractor is required to appoint an FSO to take on this responsibility of directing a security program to protect our nation's secrets while entrusted to the cleared facility. This FSO has a tremendous scope of responsibility and takes on the role as the provider of security and the link between the government contractor, the cognizant security agency (CSA) and the federal government. Fortunately, they have the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM) to help. The employer has the choice of hiring a new employee or assigning a current cleared employee as the FSO. The emp...

Recently a friend of mine asked me to run for officer of a professional committee we are involved in. “Jeff”, he said, “we only meet once a month for an hour. I’m sure you can spare that kind of time for a worthy cause.” How could I refuse such a promising proposition? I eagerly joined, wanting to make a difference. However, I quickly learned what most of us know; many meetings are a waste of time. “We only meet once a month for an hour.” How many times have you heard that pitch? You bought-in only to be pulled into a group that met only because someone said they should. Then you end up meeting for an hour and a half of directionless conversations. These may even have been followed up with an agreement to meet again to continue the discussion. You then learned to lead and took the same lessons with you. This misuse of meetings has contributed to our earned reputations of having meetings just to conduct meetings. Though meetings are an essential part of leading profess...

A former engineer with Boeing Company has pleaded guilty to possessing classified information in an unauthorized location. Does anyone want to guess where? Yes, that’s right, his house. He thought he could take the information home with him and work on it there. You can read more about the information in the article Boeing Engineer is found guilty . While many security managers are focused on good training and may think that they have it in the bag, don’t rest just yet. Chances are that the involved engineer is not the only one breaking the rules of safeguarding classified material. Those who work on classified contracts need to be reminded again and again how to do so while following the laws of our country. Let’s break this case down. Engineer has access to computer processing. He then down loads the information to a data stick and brings it home with him. Though he probably meant no harm, his actions created tons of it and he will be punished for it. Chance...

Since the Federal Government allows contractors to use classified information on the performance of contracts, the Department of Defense regulates a classified contractor’s ability to work with classified material. The Federal Government has published a policy appropriately titled: The National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM). This page turner is sponsored by the Presidential Executive Order (E0)12829 for the protection of information classified under E.O. 12958. Having poured over both publications and the updates, I can confidently assure you that they take this business very seriously. When specific work calls out performance on classified efforts, provisions of the applicable DD Form 254 and Security Classification Guide (SCG) shall govern. Both the DD 254 and SCG spell out what specific work a contractor can and cannot perform and what exactly is classified. Both of these documents not only should be available prior to execution but read and unders...