Homeland Security Careers: Where the Jobs Are

By Bob Jaffin

Career opportunities in homeland security are tremendous because the field —and potential threats — cover so many areas. What’s more, the field of homeland security is now converging with traditional disciplines, such as criminal justice, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, and security management. The bottom line: There are many opportunities for those interested in a career in homeland security. Here are some guidelines for finding a position that is right for you.

Public, Private Sector Opportunities

The main segments for homeland security careers include the following:

1. Federal Agencies – The goals of many agencies are to provide services for the public. They need homeland security professionals and procedures to ensure the integrity of their offerings and continuity of operations.
2. State, county, city and other local entities, including public schools – The needs here match those at the federal level – serve the public and ensure secure and continuing operations.
3. Critical infrastructure – This area includes utility companies; transportation systems (ports and borders, as well); telecommunication providers; financial institutions; hazardous materials producers and distributors; water supplies and systems; food supply chain providers; and more.
4. Facilities – This includes athletic stadiums, shopping malls, theme parks, concert halls, large parks, university campuses, museums and tourist attractions.
5. Corporate Assets – This includes large or global companies, such as fast food, retail, software and more.  
   

Specific areas that seem to hold the greatest opportunities include:

• Public and private schools
  - The tragedies at Columbine High School and Chechnya prove that schools are targets for terrorists.
• Health care facilities and agencies, specifically hospitals and public health agencies
  -  Similar to schools, the pervasiveness of these facilities means many job opportunities for developing and managing incident command procedures.
• Transportation sector, specifically ports and cargo and passenger facilities
  - The 9/11 attacks showed that transportation is an integral — and vulnerable — part of the national economy and infrastructure and that transportation can be weapon itself.
• Veterinary and agricultural sector
  - Agriculture is big business and so a target for terrorists. In addition, attacks    — even small-scale ones — on agricultural facilities could result in tremendous psychological effects. Economy and world markets could even be disrupted. This sector has been vulnerable for a long time, and many of its needs are still being identified. 

Building Upon a Local Focus

In talking about homeland security, you might draw a parallel to the old saying: “All politics is local.” A similar statement repeated in training and discussions about the topic is “homeland security starts with local security.” It is important to understand that the federal government has stated repeatedly that homeland security is about protecting national and global economies from terrorists, domestic and foreign. If that is so, then homeland security is based on the same economic principles that have long driven the insurance and security industries.

The threat has merely shifted from one group to a much larger and harder-to-identify group – a group driven by something other than greed. In essence, many careers in law enforcement, intelligence, security management, and first response are, have always been, and will remain closely aligned with homeland security.

In fact, homeland security can be viewed as a “big brother” to local first response and public safety. It expands on those basic goals of deterrence, prevention, risk/loss minimization and compliance. This means there are many, many opportunities for you within this growing field.