Author Archive

Marko Hakamaa

Marko Hakamaa served in various military police positions with the United States Army worldwide for 22 years before retiring in 2006 as a Master Sergeant. Afterwards, he transitioned into the civilian workforce as a contractor background investigator for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) before entering civil service as a Security Specialist in 2009.

Security Clearance Jobs

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is one of the lesser known or talked about Intelligence Community agencies whose job requirements, much like the CIA, require eligibility for Top Secret/SCI access. What do they do? They provide the U.S. Government analysis of imagery and geospatial information that describes, assesses and visually

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Security Clearance Denial

If you are working for a Department of Defense contractor there is an almost 100% likelihood they have a policy outlining the prohibition of illegal drug use. Now, say you live and work in Colorado, Washington, or in any number of the other states where recreational or medical use of

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Security Clearance Jobs

The background investigation process for our neighbors to the North closely resembles our own suitability and security clearance process. Their version of our public trust suitability process is referred to as the reliability status background investigation process and is equivalent to our Tier 1. It is used to grant employees

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Security Clearance Process

In a recent interview with Security Management (ASIS Online), Charlie Phalen, Director of the National Background Investigations Bureau, outlined the challenges NBIB inherited from OPM’s Federal Investigative Services and what the focus is going forward. Phalen stated “there were two big main focuses. One is, there is this backlog of

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