Security Executive Blog

The Opportunity If employed by a defense contractor, chances are that you perform work on goods and services for research and development of a weapon system or other new capabilities. That being the case the DEFAULT focus as a Facility Security Officer (FSO) or security specialist is on technical data. The problem is: while there is abundant guidance on protection of classified information (proscriptive regulation aka NISPOM) bridging the GAP between classified and sensitive, protecting unclassified is of utmost concern. Here is where FSOs can really provide value to the enterprise. The Problem Take a look at this paraphrase from Allen Dulles' book The Craft of Intelligence: In the 1950's the US Congress was concerned that there was just too much technical information available on government programs.  From that concern, they commissioned researchers to assemble as much information from public domain about a particular program as they could. The group scour...

Facility Security Officers (FSO) have a tremendous responsibility developing a security program to protect classified information. After all, they (individual or staff) are the link between the government oversight (cognizant security office), customer (prime contractor or Government Contracting Activity) and the cleared defense contractor to ensure that classified information is properly protected. However, if FSOs focus solely on the classified responsibilities, they are missing great opportunities to increase their effectiveness. That’s right, focusing solely on the single task of protecting classified information may reduce chances of being more effective.  Providing value added outside of the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM) actually helps the FSO create a better security program. FSOs can expand their influence by providing lessons learned and best practices to integrate security into all enterprise areas. These areas become part of a...