SEC/Elsevier partnership to enable an education in security

April 10, 2013
Alliance means tomorrow’s security and business leaders will be armed with first-hand knowledge of security and risk management best practices

In today’s risk environment, organizations are looking for security executives that are as smart, prepared, vigilant and progressive as the ever-present risk they will attempt to mitigate. Corporate security is no longer purely a center for organizational threat detection and mitigation — in essence the corporate world needs businesspeople who are well versed in security rather than the opposite.

It is with this in mind that the Security Executive Council (SEC) announces today a partnership with Elsevier Publishing to deliver a collection of security educational resources. Elsevier’s Security Executive Council Risk Management Portfolio contains content that equips executives, practitioners and educators with proven information and practical solutions for successful security and risk management programs.

Whether you are an “old-school” security executive looking to become more well-versed in the modern technologies that have overtaken the industry, or if you are a student just trying to break into the realm, there is a variety of content available. Ten titles are now available with 15 more planned for later in 2013.

“If you look at security practitioners and executives, it is interesting because we start educating them very late in the game,” SEC managing director Bob Hayes says. “Even if you have a security degree, a lot of the times the books being taught are not written by the security practitioners themselves.”

The aim of the SEC/Elsevier partnership is to overcome that obstacle by providing educational materials that have been culled from the expertise of security practitioners. Content types include:

  • Practical playbooks on the essentials of setting up a new security program;
  • Concise research reports on key industry issues;
  • Trend reports;
  • Comprehensive baselines;
  • Guidelines that provide frameworks to build new solutions;
  • Books that provide more in-depth examinations of key topics; and
  • Short topic-based articles.

“Academic institutions will now be able to more easily connect the theory with the practice of risk and security management,” Greg Niehaus, Professor of Finance and Insurance, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, said in a press release.

Elsevier’s Security Executive Council Risk Management Portfolio is the newest addition to the broader Elsevier Risk Management & Security Collection, which provides executives, practitioners, and educators with essential resources for risk management, security leadership, digital forensics, IT security, physical security, homeland security and emergency management. The titles can be purchased individually at the Elsevier Store link above or as a collection at www.ScienceDirect.com.

Once focused on building up a database of security educational research and resources, Hayes says this next step for the SEC is a part of the organization’s evolution. In fact, the SEC has become dedicated to working with business schools around the country to help educate future security and business professionals. To that end, it has embarked on a risk management educational partnership with the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina to incorporate SEC content and research into its business curriculums and courses (See the sidebar “An Education in Risk” in the April issue of STE — free copies available at ISC West booth 12147).

“We’ve got a whole new opportunity now,” Hayes explains. “If we can start getting real information out to these people when they are in college, think how fast we are going to advance the industry.” He adds that the research and other materials will be proposed to other business schools for adoption around the country.

Whether the student becomes a security executive, a systems integrator, or even a company CEO, these materials will help them better understand the importance of the security department to an organization’s health and risk posture; and how security can contribute to bottom-line business concerns.

As Hayes wrote in an April STE feature article (pick up a free copy at ISC West booth 12147), “We as industry practitioners must take an active part in providing current and emerging business leaders with tested and validated security knowledge best-practices presented in a business management context.”

“It has taken us 10 years to get this knowledge base together,” Hayes says. “It’s not just our faculty’s knowledge, it’s a whole bunch of people’s knowledge—that’s the beauty of it.”

As more students come up through the ranks of business schools, being able to draw on that knowledge through the SEC and Elsevier should give would-be CSOs and CEOs the tools to create a new breed of business and security executives—while advancing our industry as a whole as well.

For more information on the SEC, please visit www.securityexecutivecouncil.com. Visit Elsevier at http://store.elsevier.com.

Paul Rothman is managing editor of Security Technology Executive magazine. Pick up a free copy of the April issue at the Cygnus Security booth at ISC West, #12147.