Sonia Beatriz Andrade Niño, who currently works in Colombia as a consultant advisor in risk management and corporate security processes in several national and multinational companies, is our guest as CPP of the month.By: Santiago Jaramillo H.
Usually the security segment is integrated to a greater extent by men, but without a doubt women have been gaining their own pulse a space in this industry, which increasingly has people of this gender at the head of important projects and companies.
One of these pleasant cases is evidenced by the Colombian Sonia Beatriz Andrade Niño, who has become a benchmark in Latin America and especially in her country, where she is in charge of important risk management and corporate security projects.
"My connection with security is born from a spontaneous situation, in a conjunctural and difficult moment, when I was going through one of those tests that life imposes on us, God put on my way the family member and friend who would guide me in this beautiful profession of security: Colonel Luis Enrique La Rotta, who is founder and director of Sicurex, the longest-running security academy in Colombia, and president of the ISVI group, dedicated to the development of comprehensive security solutions," says our CPP.
Luis Enrique, mentor and teacher of many generations of security professionals in the coffee country, gave Sonia Beatriz the opportunity to discover the world of security when it was 1994. Around the same time, Sicurex was leading projects in Colombia such as bringing security to university settings, making the CPP certification of ASIS International reach the country and, at the same time, strengthening the ASIS 225 chapter.
In this way, our guest, who is in love with educational processes, initiated one that was in favor of training and development in security issues, and another of application of teaching and learning methodologies supported by her character as a teacher that would facilitate the transfer of security knowledge.
"With ISVI Ltda I was directly linked until 2004, venturing into several fronts of safety performance, quality and training. With Sicurex, my Alma Mater, the links in the teaching field are maintained. This institution, to which I owe so much, will always occupy a special place in my professional goals", emphasizes Andrade Niño.
Why become certified as a CPP?
According to our guest, the purpose of certification is closely related to the characteristics and conditions of each individual, in general terms it is a purpose of improvement that undoubtedly needs to be based on ethical principles to be part of a network of "colleagues and associates" who share lessons learned and best practices of established standards.
"The true purpose can be measured by the recertification that we must carry out every three years, generally those people who have as a professional objective to work under the standards of certification are recertified," he says, adding that "the most significant contribution of certification for the industry is amalgamated in the rational application compatible with reality, in the unification towards a universal language and in practices aligned with global standards".
This shows, as this Colombian emphasizes, that any industry that has professionals certified in international standards will improve its levels of competitiveness and ensure models of global acceptance.
One of the greatest satisfactions of Sonia Beatriz is undoubtedly her profession, but her greatest joy is offered by her three children, who every day exceed her expectations and harbor a feeling of tranquility and hope.
"My two oldest children have made their homes with beautiful, bright and hard-working women, the eldest being the father of Paula Sophie, our little star of a year and a half of age. They are the engine of my life and my dreams, currently they run with their father their own company, in which they develop fiberglass products for the construction and industrial sector oriented to the domestic and export market, "he stresses.
Education, more than a vocation
Our CPP del es is a teacher by training and vocation, since she graduated in the normal school of the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca (Colombia) and her passion has always been to share knowledge. As a teacher she worked in the public sector in schools in the most needy sectors of Bogotá (Colombia), an experience that brought to her life a great sensitivity to the value of people and situations beyond the material.
"Thanks to the support of the father of my children and my whole family, I was fortunate to fulfill the great dream of being a professional in dentistry, that branch of health that deals with the best means of communication of the human being: the smile. In 1982 I graduated from the Colombian Dental College."
Already in terms of his studies in the field of security, Andrade Niño ventured into security, after studying a diploma in security administration at the Javeriana University in 1994 and taking a basic security course, as well as preparing for certification in Sicurex. He also completed the course of Senior Management and Security Management at the Intelligence School of the Colombian Army, and a specialization in security administration at the Alcalá de Henares University.
But as our guest acknowledges: "In the field of security there is always more to learn, so I constantly seek to expand my skills with training programs."
Within her work in the security industry, it is worth noting that Sonia Beatriz has been linked to such recognized companies as ISVI Ltda., in which she had the opportunity to develop risk management and service management models for pharmaceutical and productive oil companies, an activity that she combined with teaching in training programs in the area of risks and management of security services.
She currently works as a consultant advisor in risk management and corporate security processes in several national and multinational companies in Latin America and, at the same time, is deputy manager of excellence in virtual.com, a company that develops online training programs for several national and international educational institutions.
Within the field of volunteer service Andrade is the Regional Vice President of ASIS International for the XXIII region Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, member of the board of directors of ASIS, Chapter 225 Bogotá, Colombia, and vice president of the AZAI Foundation.
The duty of a CPP
Leaving aside the laudable trajectory that our guest has, we asked her to tell us what are the analyzes that a CPP must carry out in terms of security, she shared the following points as the initiatives that a professional who wants to achieve his work in a prominent way and, at the same time, success:
* A certified CPP professional must perform comprehensive strategic security analyses that involve the determination of vulnerabilities and the assessment of risks and threats, applying standardized methods that are compatible with the characteristics of the environment.
* The analysis must be characterized by broad ethical criteria, rationalization of investment, generation of value, and must be updatable and adaptable to the dynamic situations of the present conditions.
* The analyses must be individualized and characterized, involving various variables and translating into proposals applicable to each situation, i.e. 'Taylor made'; processes of other similar operations cannot be replicated because we could never err in the execution of management, each situation must be examined separately applying principles enunciated in the CPP.
* It is very important to analyze the cost benefit and added value that our analyses and recommendations can mean to the prevention of losses, risk management and comprehensive security.
* It is mandatory to analyze economic, political frameworks and security trends, according to the moments of truth.
But more than a duty to be, as the guest puts it, the CPP, apart from following the standards, must do a conscientious work that synthesizes the needs of its clients and the people or goods that are under its responsibility.
