Security Executive Blog

Can social media posts impact your security clearance? It’s great to have family reunions or go out with friends and take pictures of events and the good times. We all want our friends to know how well we are doing and maybe we want to make some co-workers jealous while on vacation. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter make it possible to post your fun immediately. Social media is a great invention and used for good, can be a rather fun way to keep up with others and allow them to keep up with you. However, such opportunities also provide epic fail situations where the poster gets in trouble at home and at work. You may have read where school students have been suspended, military personnel have been punished and employees fired for events captured on social media. Some irresponsible postings have had reputation ruining consequences based upon perception as in the case of DeSean Jackson missing practice while posting vacation photos. Even though he had probably preplanned the event, foo...

We can apply the “Elements of Inspection” that are common to ALL cleared companies participating in the NISP. There are a few more elements that might be applied at unique cleared facilities, but facility security officers in those situations can adapt these articles to those specific needs. According to DSS’ The Self-Inspection Handbook for NISP Contractors, the five elements are: (A) Facility Security Clearance (FCL) (B) Access Authorizations (C) Security Education, (D) FOCI (E) Classification This third article in the series will address how to integrate the access authorizations into the overall security program designed to protect classified information. Here are some questions from the handbook and ways to address the topics: Are the numbers of clearances held to a minimum consistent with contractual requirements? The facility security clearance is tied to a contract. Typically this tie-in is carried down to the cleared employee. However tying in a personnel security clearance...