If you are a student or right at the beginning of your career, there are so many different directions you can take, and it’s not always obvious how you get from learning about security to actually building a career.
Qualifications are important, of course. So is developing your technical knowledge. But I think we sometimes underestimate how much of career development happens outside those things.
It is the people you meet, the things you volunteer for, the slightly daunting event you make yourself walk into, the competition you enter, the conversation you have with somebody doing a job you didn’t even know existed. And particularly at the beginning of your career, those things matter.
If an employer is looking at a number of graduates with similar qualifications and relatively little professional experience, what are you going to be able to talk about that makes you different?
Creating opportunities to get involved
This is something we think about a lot through our NextGen work within the ASIS International UK Chapter.
I don’t think our job is to tell young people what a successful security career should look like. The industry is far too broad for that anyway. What we can do is give people more opportunities to experience it, meet the people already working within it and work out where they might fit.
ASIS International has a mentorship programme, which gives members the opportunity to connect with and learn from people across the profession. Having access to somebody who is further along in their career can be incredibly valuable, particularly when you are still trying to work out what your options actually are.
Then there is the less formal side of it.
Within UK NextGen, we hold an annual speed mentoring event specifically to bring emerging professionals and more established people from across the security sector together in person.
We are also looking at how we create more direct routes into the industry. In early 2027, we will be hosting a dedicated careers fair alongside the ASC, BSIA and Security Institute, bringing emerging professionals together with organisations and employers from across the sector.
I am a huge believer in the value of actually getting people into a room together.
‘Networking’ can feel like quite an intimidating word when you are new to an industry. There can be this idea that you are supposed to walk into a room full of senior people, hand out business cards and somehow come away with a job. That isn’t really how it works.
Sometimes you just meet someone interesting. You hear about an area of security you hadn’t considered. Somebody introduces you to somebody else. Six months later you see them again at another event. Over time, you start to know people and, importantly, people start to know you. That is your network
You don’t need to walk into those rooms already knowing everybody. The whole point is that, eventually, you won’t be walking into them knowing nobody.
Actually getting to do the job
The other part of this is experience. One of the things I feel quite strongly about is that if we want young people to come into security, we need to give them opportunities to actually do security, not just sit in rooms listening to the rest of us talk about it.
That is a big part of why we created the Security is You(th) Innovation Challenge.
We piloted the competition in 2025 and are bringing it back on a larger scale on 15 October 2026. Students and emerging professionals work in teams on a realistic security and resilience challenge.
We give them a problem and let them work it out. They have to look at the information in front of them, identify risks, decide what matters, develop a response, work with people who might see the problem completely differently and then present and defend their recommendations.
And, inevitably, not everything goes perfectly. That’s part of the point.
Security professionals don’t generally get perfect information, unlimited budgets and three weeks to calmly consider every possible option. You have to make decisions, explain them and sometimes change your mind when somebody else spots something you didn’t.
Those are skills you develop by doing.
There is another benefit too. It gives somebody at the beginning of their career something real to talk about.
There is a big difference between sitting in an interview saying, ‘I’m interested in risk management’ and being able to say, ‘I took part in a security challenge, this was the problem we were given, this is what I thought we should do, this is where my team disagreed with me and this is what I learned from it.’ Suddenly you aren’t just telling somebody that you have certain skills. You have an example of using them.
Give people something to remember you for
If I could give one piece of advice to somebody starting out in security, it would probably be this: give people something to remember you for.
That doesn’t mean being the loudest person in every room. And it definitely doesn’t mean pretending you know everything. It means getting involved.
Enter the competition. Go to the event. Volunteer for something. Join the professional association. Ask somebody about their job. Write about something you’ve learned. Put your hand up for a project even if you’re slightly terrified that you don’t know enough yet.
You are not supposed to know everything at the beginning of your career. Frankly, none of us know everything twenty years into one either.
Curiosity goes a long way
So does being somebody who turns up, gets involved, asks good questions and is willing to learn.
We have a responsibility too
I also don’t think all of the responsibility should sit with young people.
As an industry, we spend a lot of time talking about attracting the next generation of security professionals. We need to make sure we are actually giving them somewhere to go when they arrive.
That means mentoring people. Making introductions. Creating opportunities for practical experience. Inviting emerging professionals into the conversation and taking their contribution seriously when they get there.
It is very easy to tell somebody to ‘build their network’ when you already have one. We should also be asking what we are doing to open ours.
That is ultimately what I want our NextGen activity to do. Not map out somebody’s career for them, but give them more opportunities to start building one for themselves.
Because your qualifications will matter. Your knowledge will matter. But so will the people you’ve met, the things you’ve tried, the times you’ve put yourself forward and the experiences you’ve picked up along the way.
You don’t need to know exactly where your security career is going to take you. You just need to start getting involved.
You don’t need to be an ASIS member to take part in the Security is You(th) Innovation Challenge. If you’re a student or emerging professional and want to put your skills to the test, meet people from across the sector and get involved, you can find out more on the ASIS UK Chapter website.
Farah Benis
Chairperson,
ASIS International UK
