Access Control
& Security Systems

“I believe that any additional education will provide a better security officer. Too often, they receive very minimal training and education. The only way to professionalize security officers is through training and education. Private security often has a negative stereotype and an organized curriculum of instruction will only serve to enhance the profession.”
— Richard J. Keyworth

“There is no question that a better trained security officer is a benefit to both the client as well as the overall industry. However, until the purchaser of security contract services is willing to pay for the better trained officer, the industry has very little incentive to conduct such programs. We need to focus on educating corporate management on the benefits of the better-trained officer and also introduce to the insurance industry the benefits of having the additional training for security contract officers.”
— Roy N. Bordes

“Homeland security courses will only provide better security officers in the future if the courses are relevant, timely, properly designed and delivered and, of course, quantifiable. There needs to be a tiered level of courses (ie. awareness, operations, technician, specialist) which can be demonstrated as improving the domestic terrorism prevention and response of the private security sector. I would hope that the Federal government would contract the program development out to an institution of higher education and not try it themselves — we have already seen too much mismanagement of Homeland Security funds.
— Ken Kingman

“Homeland security courses will absolutely help first responders in the future — along with the general public. Here in Clinton Township, Mich., we have taught courses such as National Incident Management, so that we can call on recources from anywhere. They will use another class we taught, “Unified incident command,” so responders will be using compatible equipment and the same command structure. We have also taught more than 100 of our employees about CBRNE, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats, so when we are overwelmed as they were in New York, those persons will have the equipment and knowledge to help.”
— Larry Kosmalski

“The courses are a good start. As the technology gets better, the effort will improve.”
— Demetrio Montoya

“Most of the money spent on Homeland security so far has been to educate people without security backgrounds — turning them into instant experts. Endless vulnerability assessments have been performed. Vulnerability assessment classes have been taught. Now there are a lot of people who think they are qualified to perform a vulnerability assessment.

There are a lot of security experts who are ex-government employees. These people are familiar with the acronyms and secret security requirements documents, and how to use those tools to create a government-level security program. The fact that they don't really know anything about security in the non-government sector does not prevent them from elbowing aside those who do. Just because someone can design an intrusion system to meet government requirements for a missile storage facility does not mean that person knows how to accomplish the same feat for a college campus, a high school campus, a big box retail store, an office warehouse, a restaurant, a chip factory or any of the other 31 flavors.”
— Bradford E. Black