Canadians head up ASIS Professional Certification Board

Pat Bishop, General Manager of the Profile Group of Companies is the
president of the ASIS Professional Certification Board — the first
Canadian to hold the position — and Christina Duffey of Paragon
Security is the vice-president and in-coming president for 2011.

There are 15 people on the certification board and they are appointed
by the president of ASIS International and hold the position for a
minimum of two years and a maximum of six.

“This is probably the hardest working group in ASIS,” says Bishop.
“There are 15 of us and we meet regularly on conference calls and three
times a year including the annual seminar.”

Bishop is a big believer in certification. Profile Group hires or
promotes individuals to management positions who have or are pursuing
an ASIS professional designation.

Out of the 15 people on the board three are Canadians including Bishop,
Duffey and Roger Maslen, District Manager of G4S Security Services in
Calgary. The rest make up an international contingent that includes
members from Chile, New Zealand and the U.S.

There are about 1,600 members of ASIS in Canada and of those about 388
hold certifications from the association. That includes 337 Certified
Protection Professionals (CPP), 12 Professional Certified Investigator
(PCI) and 39 Physical Security Professionals (PSP). Those are
individuals with active certification and everyone must re-certify in
three years.

“As I was coming up through the ranks it was definitely something that
was encouraged for me in terms of being at the level I needed to be at
in terms of security management and to manage some of the large
projects in the company I was with,” says Duffey who is Director,
Customer Service with Paragon Protection in Toronto. “And as I see
advertisements for job postings, CPP is part of that little tagline of
preferred skills. CPP has been out there for 30 years now and belief on
the HR side is that it is what they’re going to look for in a security
professional.”
The certification board members represent all parts of the industry
from investigation to security management consulting, to law
enforcement, crisis response, threat assessments, physical and retail
loss prevention and health care.

“The board has a broad representation from all aspects of the industry,” says Bishop.

This year marks Bishop’s sixth year on the board and he feels it’s time
to re-evaluate the focus of certification to reflect the changing needs
of the members.

“The demographic of the industry is changing rapidly. The majority of
people coming into the security industry now have some form of
secondary school education in the form of bachelor degrees or MBAs,
whether it’s university or college and a lot of another
certifications.  We’re looking at all certification programs and
evaluating them and trying to meet today’s standards to see if we’re on
the right track,” says Bishop.

To do that, the board takes a close look at those writing the certification exams and what their needs are.
“With the economy the way it is we’ve seen a lot of people come back to
certifications or designations whether unemployed,” says Duffey. “We
ask things like are we staying current with what is happening in the
industry? We make sure people are aware of it as they are transitioning
from one industry to another.”

“In Canada we have developed our own Canadian standards and we write a
Canadian exam as it pertains to Canadian law and security,” says Bishop.

Local study groups are available for all certifications and the programs are intensive.
“I don’t know anybody who could walk in and write that exam [without the study group],” he says.

For more information, contact your local ASIS chapter or the International website at asisonline.org