The Executive Protection Competency Survey the Standards Debate Forgot

ASIS, IPSB, the University of Nebraska, and the unfinished question of what an executive protection professional should actually be able to do

By Matthew C. Parker
Independent Security Advisors | EPTraining.us

Before the current ASIS-versus-BEPP debate, executive protection professionals were asked a more basic question: what should a new protector actually know and be able to do? The 2020 competency survey may be the missing link in today’s standards conversation.

I have spent more than a decade arguing that executive protection needs measurable standards. Today, the profession finally has more structure around that discussion. ASIS International released its Executive Protection Standard in September 2025, and the Board of Executive Protection Professionals reports that ANSI approved ANSI/BEPP EPS-2026 in June 2026. Employers, training providers, practitioners and clients now have more than one private standards framework to evaluate.

I consider that progress. But I also think we have left something important sitting on the side of the road.

In 2020, before ASIS and BEPP became the dominant names in the current debate, practitioners were asked a more fundamental question:

What should a new executive protection professional actually know and be able to do?

The result was the Executive Protection Professionals Core Competencies Survey Report, prepared by the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center. The project tested proposed competencies for new executive protection professionals across personal characteristics, legal and ethical considerations, information security and management, communication, planning operations and tactical operations.

The report was published. It was not hidden, and I do not believe it is fair to suggest that anyone buried it. The more interesting issue is what happened next. The work appears to have fed into later recommended-practice efforts, exposed weaknesses in the profession’s body of knowledge, and contributed to the path that eventually produced the ASIS Executive Protection Standard.

What did not become equally prominent was the original question about the individual practitioner.

That is the part I think the profession should go back and examine.

There Was a Competency Conversation Before the Standards Fight

Article 3 in this series examined the current ASIS-versus-BEPP question. That debate is important, but it begins relatively late in the story. The profession had already started asking how executive protection competence should be defined before either of today’s principal standards frameworks occupied the position they do now.

The 2020 survey matters because it approached professionalization from the individual practitioner upward. It was not primarily asking how a corporation should organize an executive protection program. It was not a state licensing study. It was not a certification examination. It was not asking which organization should become synonymous with the profession.

It was asking practitioners to evaluate the capabilities expected of someone entering executive protection.

To me, that is a fundamentally different starting point because it begins with the person expected to perform the mission rather than the organization surrounding that person.

What the 2020 Project Actually Was

The history needs to be stated carefully. It is sometimes described informally as an “IPSB survey,” but the formal University of Nebraska report identifies the originating process differently.

According to the report, an ASIS Executive Protection Council working group met in January 2020 for a two-day workshop facilitated by the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center. The group identified and described proposed core competencies for the executive protection field. Additional workgroups then reviewed and expanded that material. In September 2020, the University was re-engaged to design and administer a worldwide online survey testing those draft competencies with executive protection professionals.

IPSB’s participation should not be erased from the history. Chuck Tobin, who has held leadership roles in both the International Protective Security Board and the ASIS Executive Protection Council, later publicly described the project as work conducted by IPSB, ASIS and the University of Nebraska. He also credited IPSB members as partners in the follow-on recommended-practice and standards work.

The most defensible description, therefore, is that the survey grew from an ASIS Executive Protection Council competency initiative facilitated by the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center, with IPSB participation and later partnership publicly acknowledged by people involved in the work.

That precision is important. This standards series has repeatedly argued that a standard is not a license, certification is not course attendance, and private professional activity should not be confused with government authority. We should apply the same discipline to the history of the competency project.

The Survey Asked About the Person Doing the Work

The 2020 report described its draft competencies as capabilities, basic skills and knowledge that a new Executive Protection Professional might be expected to possess or obtain early in a career.

That phrase is important.

The survey was aimed at the individual practitioner. It tried to identify a common professional foundation: what a person entering executive protection should understand, what that person should be able to do, and where disagreements existed about whether a capability belonged at the entry, advanced or specialty level.

A program standard asks a different question. It may define the structure, governance, risk assessment, policies, resources, operations and evaluation expected of an organization’s executive protection program.

Individual competency asks whether the person assigned to carry out those functions can actually perform them.

I believe both are necessary. What I do not believe is that they are interchangeable.

What Practitioners Said Was Important

The survey was accessed 393 times and produced 278 responses that the researchers classified as valid. The results showed substantial agreement around many capabilities that remain central to executive protection training today.

The percentages matter, but I find the comments even more useful. Practitioners were already wrestling with the same issues instructors, employers and regulators still face today: level, role and measurability.

Some questioned whether managing a solo or small team was realistic for a new protector. Others considered parts of threat, risk and vulnerability assessment advanced work while still supporting basic competency in the subject. Respondents distinguished between general transportation knowledge and the higher skill expected of a dedicated security driver. They raised questions about physical fitness, mental fitness, technology, specialty roles, medical capability, use of force and the way changing conditions affect movement and planning.

That is where the survey becomes especially important to me as a trainer. It was beginning to expose the architecture of a profession: a common core, advanced competencies, specialty competencies, and a requirement to decide what can actually be measured rather than merely discussed.

The Survey Was Useful—But It Was Not a Vote of the Entire Profession

The survey should not be promoted beyond what its methodology can support.

The University of Nebraska used snowball sampling. Workgroup members distributed the survey to professional networks and recipients were encouraged to forward it to others. Because the researchers did not know how many people ultimately received the survey link, they could not calculate a response rate.

The respondent pool was also heavily weighted in identifiable ways. The report states that 92.1 percent of respondents were male, 71.2 percent were based in North America, 64 percent worked full time in executive protection, and 41.4 percent reported more than 15 years in the field. Only 44.2 percent reported membership in an executive-protection professional organization.

The University’s own resource catalog classifies the document as an unpublished, non-peer-reviewed report.

None of that makes the research unimportant. It simply means we should describe it honestly. I would not use this survey to claim that “the profession decided” anything. I would use it for what it actually was: a serious practitioner-validation exercise that gives us a documented body of competency work worth examining.

It was also not regulation, licensure, certification or a binding national standard.

That distinction goes directly to the point I have made throughout this series: research can inform a standard, a standard can inform training, training can prepare a practitioner, and certification can assess defined competence—but those functions should not be deliberately blurred.

So What Happened to the Results?

The results did not disappear after publication.

The report states that practitioners were also asked to identify references that could contribute to an executive protection body of knowledge, and those references were forwarded to the workgroups for review and vetting.

There is also a public record connecting the competency project to the next stage of standards work. In a later public post, Tobin described the 2019–2020 competency initiative as the beginning of a longer effort. He wrote that the volunteers who participated in the competency work moved into recommended-practice studies and that some of those studies became part of the “backbone” of the effort to write the ASIS Executive Protection Standard. He specifically thanked CEPLC and IPSB members for their partnership.

IPSB also appears to have acted directly on one of the weaknesses exposed by the project. In a 2024 interview, Tobin said the competency study showed that the field had many books and practitioner publications but lacked a sufficient peer-reviewed body of knowledge. He connected that finding to IPSB’s decision to establish the Close Protection and Security Journal, which began publishing in 2023 and continues today.

Those are real uses of the research, and they should be acknowledged.

What I have not found in the public record is the next step I would expect from an individual-competency project: a stand-alone competency standard, a completed individual certification architecture, or a broadly adopted mechanism for demonstrating that a practitioner actually meets the competencies the work identified.

That is where I see the odd man out.

The Work Continued—But the Question Changed

ASIS released its Executive Protection Standard on September 23, 2025. ASIS describes the document as a structured framework for designing, managing and enhancing executive protection programs. Its published description says the standard provides minimum criteria for the development, implementation, operation and maintenance of an effective EP program using risk-management principles.

That is important work, but compare the question being answered.

2020: What should a new executive protection professional know and be able to do?

2025: What should an effective executive protection program contain, and how should an organization develop, operate and maintain it?

There is nothing wrong with that second question. Organizations need program standards. But answering it did not answer the first question; it moved the discussion to a different level.

A company can have an excellent program manual and still employ people who cannot perform the required tasks. A highly capable protector can also be placed inside a poorly designed program with weak policies, insufficient resources or inadequate management.

One problem is organizational.

The other is individual.

If executive protection is serious about professionalization, I believe we have to solve both.

BEPP Makes the Individual-Competency Question Even More Important

The standards environment changed again when BEPP developed ANSI/BEPP EPS-2026. BEPP describes that document as comprehensive guidance for providing executive protection services, including threat assessment, risk mitigation, protective-detail formations and protocols, advance procedures, contingency planning, professionalism and continuing training.

BEPP is also developing a standard for protective intelligence systems, a standard for executive protection training providers, and a board-certification examination through Prometric.

Those projects may eventually create a closer connection between standards and individual assessment. But as of September 2026, BEPP’s own project page says the board-certification initiative remains under development after being delayed while EPS-2026 was finalized.

That leaves the same gap I keep coming back to: somewhere between the standards document and the person standing the post, advancing the site, moving the principal or making the decision, we still need a credible way to answer one question:

How does someone independently demonstrate that he or she can meet the professional competencies the job requires?

The Most Important Word in the 2020 Report May Be “New”

The survey repeatedly referred to capabilities expected of a new executive protection professional. That is more significant than it first appears.

A mature profession should not pretend that an entry-level protector, an experienced advance agent, a security driver, a protective intelligence analyst, a residential-security specialist, a detail leader and a program director require identical levels of competence.

The survey respondents recognized this. One of the report’s two overarching themes was that core competencies might need to be assessed by primary roles and specialties in addition to a comprehensive common core.

To me, that points toward a much more mature model than a single course-completion certificate. It suggests a tiered professional system:

• a common foundational competency core;
• advanced operational competencies;
• specialty competencies for defined protective roles;
• experience requirements for higher levels of responsibility;
• independent assessment of defined competencies; and
• continuing education or recertification to maintain currency.

That is very different from pretending every course certificate proves the same thing. A certificate can document that training occurred. It should not automatically be treated as proof that the holder can perform every function associated with executive protection.

This Is Where the Survey Connects Directly to ISA’s Standards Position

This is where the survey connects directly to the position I have taken throughout this series. The professional ecosystem should be understandable, and each piece should do the job it claims to do.

Training prepares the professional. Standards define expectations. Regulation establishes legal authority. Experience develops judgment. Performance demonstrates competence.

The 2020 competency work matters because the profession had already begun defining the bridge between standards and performance. Practitioners were debating which capabilities belonged at entry level, which required more experience, which varied by specialty, which needed better definitions, and which should be measurable.

That is exactly the conversation I believe should come before meaningful professional certification.

I am not suggesting that we simply dust off a 2020 report and declare the problem solved. The survey did not settle the issue. What it did was give us a documented starting point—and I see no reason to throw that work away and start from zero.

What ISA Believes Should Happen Next

I would not simply adopt the 2020 competencies unchanged. Six years have passed. Technology, digital exposure, protective intelligence, communications, medical expectations and the threat environment have changed. The ASIS standard now exists. ANSI/BEPP EPS-2026 now exists. State regulatory requirements remain controlling where applicable. Federal protective organizations and research continue to provide additional operational benchmarks.

What I would support is a 2026 competency validation and mapping project.

The 2020 competencies should be mapped against the ASIS Executive Protection Standard, ANSI/BEPP EPS-2026, applicable state regulatory requirements, current protective-intelligence and threat-assessment doctrine, contemporary medical and communications expectations, and the actual roles employers assign to executive protection personnel.

That review should identify four things:

• what still belongs in a common entry-level professional core;
• what should move to advanced or specialty competency;
• what has become obsolete or requires revision; and
• what new competencies have emerged since 2020.

Then we should ask the question that, in my view, turns a list of good ideas into an actual competency system:

How will each requirement be demonstrated?

Written knowledge can be tested. Planning ability can be assessed through exercises. Advance work can be evaluated against a defined standard. Movement, communication, driving, medical response, protective intelligence and decision-making can all be observed and measured when the performance criteria are clear.

That is the point where standards stop being aspirational language and start becoming operational.

The Survey May Be More Useful Today Than It Was in 2020

In 2020, the profession did not have the standards architecture it has today. The competency survey was working in an environment where the larger framework was still emerging.

Today, the pieces are easier to see.

Program standards can define how organizations establish and manage executive protection. Service standards can define expectations for protective operations. State regulators can determine legal authority and minimum licensing requirements. Training organizations can prepare practitioners against defined learning objectives.

But none of those functions, by itself, proves that an individual protector can perform.

We still need the bridge between the standard and the person expected to perform against it.

I think the 2020 survey is one of the best places to restart that discussion because it reminds us that the profession had already begun asking the right question.

The Bottom Line

The Executive Protection Professionals Core Competencies Survey was not a secret report, and it should not be portrayed as though IPSB commissioned a survey and then buried it. The formal record shows an ASIS Executive Protection Council competency initiative facilitated by the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center, with IPSB participation later publicly acknowledged by people involved in the project.

The work was used. It contributed to later recommended-practice efforts. It helped expose a weakness in executive protection’s research base. It influenced the professional path that eventually produced the ASIS Executive Protection Standard, and IPSB connected the research problem it revealed to development of the Close Protection and Security Journal.

What did not become equally visible was the original individual-competency question.

That is why I call the survey the odd man out. Not because it failed. Not because anyone hid it. But because the profession moved forward without fully finishing the question it asked.

What should an executive protection professional actually be able to do, and how should that competence be proven?

For me, that question belongs at the center of the standards conversation.

Standards should serve the profession—not become the profession.

Train. Test. Demonstrate. Experience. Recertify.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the 2020 Executive Protection Professionals Core Competencies Survey?

It was a University of Nebraska Public Policy Center survey designed to test draft executive protection competencies developed through an ASIS Executive Protection Council working-group process. The survey asked practitioners whether proposed capabilities were appropriate expectations for new executive protection professionals and invited suggestions about wording, specialties and reference materials.

Was it an IPSB survey?

Not by itself. The formal University report identifies the ASIS Executive Protection Council working group and the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center as the organizations leading the documented competency-development and survey process. IPSB leadership later publicly described IPSB, ASIS and the University of Nebraska as participants in the study, and IPSB members were credited in related follow-on work. “ASIS/IPSB/University of Nebraska competency project” is more accurate than attributing the survey solely to IPSB.

How many people participated?

The survey was accessed 393 times and produced 278 responses classified by the researchers as valid. Because the link was distributed through snowball sampling, the researchers could not calculate a response rate.

What did the survey find?

Respondents showed strong support for many capabilities now commonly associated with professional executive protection, including advance work, threat/risk/vulnerability assessment, information security, transportation practices, tactical principles, medical first response, protective movement and incident management. The comments also showed disagreement about which capabilities belong at entry level and which should be treated as advanced or specialty functions.

Did the survey establish a national executive protection standard?

No. It was a competency-validation research project. It was not a law, licensing requirement, certification program or binding national standard.

Did IPSB use the results?

Yes, at least in identifiable ways. IPSB leadership publicly connected the project’s finding about the lack of peer-reviewed professional literature to creation of the Close Protection and Security Journal. IPSB members were also involved in follow-on recommended-practice and ASIS standards-development work. What is not evident in the public record is a stand-alone IPSB competency standard or completed individual certification system built directly from the 2020 survey.

How is the survey different from the ASIS Executive Protection Standard?

The 2020 survey focused primarily on capabilities expected of individual executive protection professionals early in their careers. The 2025 ASIS Executive Protection Standard establishes minimum criteria for the development, implementation, operation and maintenance of an organizational executive protection program. One focuses on the person; the other focuses primarily on the program.

How does ANSI/BEPP EPS-2026 fit into the picture?

ANSI/BEPP EPS-2026 addresses the provision of executive protection services and includes operational topics such as risk mitigation, protective details, advance procedures and contingency planning. BEPP is also developing separate projects involving protective intelligence, training providers and board certification. Those initiatives make the need to distinguish program standards, service standards, training standards and individual competency even more important.

Why does this matter to executive protection certification?

Because a certification should communicate that an individual has met defined requirements. A standards document can define expectations, but the profession still needs a credible assessment method to determine whether an individual practitioner can actually meet them.

Does ISA believe the 2020 competencies should simply be adopted today?

No. ISA believes they should be reviewed and mapped against current standards, regulation, government and research doctrine, technology, the contemporary threat environment and specialty roles. The survey is valuable because it gives the profession a documented starting point rather than requiring competency work to begin again from zero.

Related ISA / EPTraining.us Resources

Article 3 — Two Executive Protection Standards: The Question Joe LaSorsa Asked

Executive Protection Training Standards: A National Priority?

Executive Protection Training Programs: New EP Instructors Beware, It’s Not Easy

Executive Protection Training Standards & Program Evaluation

Executive Protection Training Standards: The Minimums

ISA Executive Protection Training Standards

Executive Protection Training Curriculum

Executive Protection Training Syllabus

Sources and Further Reading

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center — Executive Protection Professionals Core Competencies Survey Report (December 2020)

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center — Report catalog entry

EP Wired — International Protective Security Board interview with Chuck Tobin (2024)

International Protective Security Board — Close Protection and Security Journal

ASIS International — Executive Protection Standard announcement (September 23, 2025)

ASIS International — Executive Protection Standard

Board of Executive Protection Professionals — Standards and project updates

About the Author

Matthew C. Parker is CEO of Independent Security Advisors LLC and Director of Training Operations for EPTraining.us. A retired U.S. Army training leader, Master Instructor, and protective-services practitioner, his assignments included training-department management at the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear School, recognition as Instructor of the Cycle and Instructor of the Year, and service with Army ROTC at Virginia Tech. He has more than three decades of military, government, executive-protection, training, and advisory experience, including international security and training work in Iraq and Ukraine.

For more than a decade, Parker has focused on a question central to the professionalization of executive protection: How do we turn standards into measurable performance? Through ISA and EPTraining.us, he has developed and evaluated protective-services training against regulatory requirements, external standards, operational practice, and demonstrated competency. His position is simple: training prepares the professional; standards define expectations; performance demonstrates competence.

Series: ISA Executive Protection Standards Series — Article 3A / Special Report

Publisher: Independent Security Advisors LLC / EPTraining.us