Today, senior leadership of ASIS International (ASIS) and the Security Industry Association (SIA) will formally announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at ISC West at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas. The objective of the MOU is to promote collaboration and information sharing between the two leading security industry associations. The largest professional association for security management professionals, ASIS represents more than 38,000 security practitioners worldwide. SIA, the leading trade association for electronic and physical security solution providers, represents more than 450 member companies.
The overarching goals of the agreement are to foster growth of the security industry, promote public safety, and protect critical infrastructure globally. Among the issues that may be addressed by the two associations are: privacy concerns over the use of security technologies; the development of an educated security workforce; voluntary consensus standards; and the availability of federal and state financial resources for the protection of critical infrastructure during a time of fiscal austerity.
“As a combined global community of tens of thousands of security practitioners and technology innovators, ASIS and SIA together possess an invaluable repository of knowledge and expertise,” says, Geoffrey T. Craighead, CPP, president, ASIS. “The security challenges facing our nation and our world continuously evolve and new risks emerge making it increasing vital to collaborate and to leverage available resources to ensure the future protection of people, property and information. It is our primary, common goal.”
“A key strategic SIA goal is to increase our collaboration with organizations within the security industry toward the common goal of protecting critical infrastructure around the globe,” explained SIA CEO Don Erickson. “Combining the expertise of technology leaders from the supplier community within SIA with the vision of leading security practitioners from ASIS will help shape the future direction of the homeland security industry. We can do more working together to achieve our common objectives in the fields of education, government relations, research and standards than we can do on our own.”
