People often ask the question, “How do I get a security clearance? Or how can my company get one?”
My first response is to promote yourself. There is nothing you can do to get a clearance until someone sees value in your product or service and sponsors the company for a security clearance.
Value is simply someone who has a tangible need for a particular product or service and wants to put it into an already classified contract in order to use their products or services.
There are many jobs that require authorization or security services and some of those jobs include cleaning services, engineering services, secretarial services, whatever. There are many opportunities to obtain a security clearance. However, you cannot simply obtain a security clearance in preparation for work. The job offer comes first.
The first step is to be sponsored by a federal government entity, a government contracting agency (GCA), or another defense contract or contract. Once a business entity has established a need, it can be sponsored for a security clearance.
Government contractors are awarded classified contracts as part of their business activities
A few years ago, I was on a radio, television, and radio talk show and couldn’t really say too much because the talk show hosts were talking and talking about their surprise that the government allowed companies to have security clearances and work in classified. work and your opinion. In his opinion, there was no oversight and it was irresponsible to allow someone other than a government entity to have classified information.
I spoke as much as I could on the subject, but they yelled at me. There was no point trying to address irrational thinking there, but I just wanted to let you know that yes, civil employees and civil business entities can have a security clearance.
The way it works is the GCA, which is an agency of the federal government like the department of defense or the department of energy. They will have a contractual need to purchase services or products from contractors. But let’s get back very quickly. The GCA is a designated original classification authority, which means that they are capable of classifying information. At the highest level, the President of the United States is the original classification authority. However, the president of the United States does not go through an investigative process. Of course, they can enjoy the benefits of being authorized to do their job as president.
They delegate their OCA responsibility to the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the CIA, the FBI, and all these other government organizations. Government organizations are the ones that judge what is classified. Contractors or civil organizations don’t do that. They are what are called derivatives classification authorities. They can only use and produce things that are already classified.
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