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Necessary Skills for Counter-terrorism Professionals

By Dan Sommer

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 29May2008 Word count: 453 Viewed: 503 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

The pervasive threat of terrorism in the 21st century requires those on the front lines in the law enforcement, military and intelligence communities to possess advanced counterterrorism skills. To better understand how to combat terrorism, counterterrorism professionals need to recognize long-term trends in terrorist activity and learn how to develop proactive strategies to mitigate emerging threats before they become a reality.

Because the threat environment is ever-changing, you need a dynamic learning environment so that you can stay on the cutting-edge - one step ahead of the enemy. At Henley-Putnam University, we provide students with a thorough understanding of terrorist strategies. We equip our students with advanced counterterrorism skills like how to develop and conduct advanced intelligence collection and perform sophisticated terrorist threat assessments.

Qualifications for Counterterrorism Professionals Across all counterterrorism jobs are common requirements for individuals that possess a minimum of a four-year degree with extensive, direct counterterrorism experience or an advanced degree in a highly-related field (like terrorism or intelligence studies). In all cases, a master's degree is desirable and for many counterterrorism jobs, is a minimum qualification.

Common Skills Required by Many Counterterrorism Employers In addition to the above, counterterrorism professionals need to understand terrorist group dynamics, strategy, targeting, and tactics as well as how policies are formulated, developed and implemented to counter terrorist planning and operations (e.g. counterterrorism skills). Senior-level analysts need to not only possess a deep knowledge of terrorism, but also how to brief key decisionmakers about emerging risks and threats posed by terrorist activity.

Counterterrorism Jobs Numerous, hard-to-find positions and career openings related to counterterrorism may be found in job titles like: fusion intelligence analyst, counterterrorism analyst, counterterrorism specialist, criminal analyst, investigator, open source research analyst, and research associate to name a few. These types of counterterrorism jobs are available in both the government and in the private and non-profit sectors.

Competitive positions with top-employers in the private and public sector are looking for employees that are proficient in conducting advanced counterterrorism analysis and understand how to research, assess, and manage large projects and teams to complete complex and challenging tasks in a timely and professional manner. Critical thinking and problem solving skills, in addition to the ability to competently communicate ideas to a broad spectrum audience, are key elements of gaining an edge over your peers and standing out from the crowd.

Detailed knowledge of the different aspects of the intelligence cycle (tasking, collection, fusion, analysis, production and dissemination) is also important for counterterrorism analysts, which is typically learned through hands-on experience working in national or military intelligence and/or through an extensive and highly-specialized education program that focuses exclusively on intelligence and counterterrorism.

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