ABOUT US - BSA, Brillstein and Cobra Services LC
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The BRILLSTEIN SECURITY ACADEMY (BSA), as part of Brillstein Security Group (BSG), - offers professional and specialized security training and study courses approximately since 1985 in several countries worldwide. In the beginning, our courses ran under different concept names such as the "EFFACT" programme. In the beginning years, the focus was on close protection and intelligence training. Founder Ariel "Arik" Brillstein’s still today active as teacher and author of training books. "Ariel" (Hebrew) means "Lion of God" - hence the lion in the company's logo.
For a number of years since it's founding, the BSG was active only in the US and, to some extend, in Canada. Brillstein then started offering courses also in Europe, starting in the early 1990's. In these "early years", we only trained BSG staff; we did not offer courses to non-BSG participants. About 30 years ago, Brillstein started offering courses to a relatively broad public and we developed a number of new, exclusive courses up to the range of courses of today.
Between 2002 and 2006, the BSA cooperated with other institutions, but in order to tighten security and cut down on admin and red tape, we decided by November 2006 to handle all courses through the BSA directly, again with a number new courses and even better possibilities for our students. Due to some new laws and regs in several countries, we adapted our courses to meet requirements, such as SITO/SIA, US International Standards Organization for the Security Industry or other, similar regulations. Globalization makes a much more international approach necessary, than any local laws, but since in some areas only staff with an official license may operate at some locations, we needed to react to these circumstances, and we did.
Ever since the start of the EFFACT program, back in the day, we have been using training facilities in Oregon and Washington State, later on in Idaho, as well as in Israel. Once we started to offer courses in Europe, we started to build up facilities in Europe, too, with main focus on France. Since 2006, the BSG additionally runs a facility in South Africa.
After the well-deserved retirment of Arik Brillstein, the former company EUBSA has been dissolved, The BSA is now being operated by Briillstein and Cobra Services LC, out of Wyoming, USA. But this hasn't changed neither the programme, nor the focus on top-notch and otherwise hard-to-get training and career opportunities.
Our various Study Courses, unlike many other courses on the open market, are COMPREHENSIVE and COMPLETE training and study concepts. They include a complete training from scratch. They should be regarded as STUDY courses (with very few exceptions), rather than mere training courses. That is to day that our courses are on a college level, rather than just physical training sessions. You cannot expect to learn a profession through courses with duration from only a couple of weeks up to maybe 3, 4 months. It's simply not realistic to really think that such short courses would suffice to learn a dangerous profession with many responsibilities which may include taking care of other people's life.
To give you an example of what we mean: there are some courses available to train to be an "investigator". Now OUR goal is to train students to the best possible level - our model for this particular profession is the police, the FBI in particular. The basic FBI academy takes about 16 weeks to pass. But do you think for a private course, 4 months training are sufficient? Think again: no FBI cadet will learn all there is to learn within these 16 weeks. Crime scene training (up to certification as Crime Scene Expert) ALONE can take up to 3 months of training in high-level police departments. We want to offer the best possible training available on the private market. This means we need to include the COMPLETE training for our students. This, however, is simply not possible in just a few months, let alone a few weeks.
As a further example, we'd like to refer to our "PII" course (Professional International Investigator). This is a 2 year course on the highest level, including the total training programme up to criminal detective, crime scene expert and private investigator. There is no other private programme of this kind available with this content, any where. We select a maximum 20 students each from America and Europe per year, as we believe that is about the number per year that the market needs. It would be unwise to train more PII per year, knowing we can't employ them. We are fully convinced that the PII is the very best private training programme of its kind. But this cannot be realized within 10, 12 weeks or even less- as other training schools pretend and actually offer.
Our courses include the necessary studies (theory), training sessions (seminars), internship phase (in order to gain hands-on experiences) and each graduate will be employed upon completion of a course. Our students not only receive the (in our own eyes) best possible private training available, but also a built-in career option within the BSG - with a number of international position within top level security. We do NOT mainly concentrate on the run-of-the-mill PSD work - this means: we are not so much involved in guarding premises and such like (yes, BSG do offer that kind of service and we do guard premises, but not not as a main focus of our services) or convoy or force protection jobs. You might find well-paid jobs of that kind with other companies, but you will probably also already know that such jobs have a short half-life period, maybe 4-6 months, and you will need to start chasing jobs again soon, plus at a certain point in your life you will start getting too old for that kind of life. BSG operates differently or rather in different areas of security, much less exposed, and a lot more covert and NOT so much as your regular PMC/PSD company. To check for details on our company, please go to www.eubsa.com and www.recruitment.eubsa.com
Thus, the right moment to consider a FULL training for a career with MORE options than just sticking your neck out on the front line for others IS NOW. Our study courses take some time to complete but they do offer you a true career with various options, a broader perspective for your life. If you read the details on our various study courses, you will easily understand the total possible range of the different security areas we are dealing with as a security company. The BSG is a global security network with at present about 500 authorized partners in some 50 countries. This allows us to operate at any location worldwide, low-profile, quickly, under various names as not to expose our name and company etc. All our graduates will be offered a career option within our network. There are people saying, this sounds just too good to be true... - the whole secret behind this guarantee is that, unlike MOST other training institutes, we only train as many students per year, as we know we will be able to employ directly in any given year. That is one of the big differences between BSA/EUBSA and others.
The study phase (theory) of each course (where applicable) will be in the eLearning or distance learning format. Find out more about distance learning. The total duration of the study phase ranges between 6 - 20 months, depending on the kind of course chosen. There is ample direct support via forums, e-mail contact to a tutor etc. You thus do not need to study on your own, but you CAN study in your own time, at your own pace. Each course also includes training seminars, with duration between 1 and 6 weeks, again depending on the course chosen. You will be able to choose from various dates, each course will be offered twice per year. You will thus be very flexible time-wise. Courses take place in the US, Europe and South Africa, with the main focus on the facilities in France (this is due to the very strict immigration regs in the US for non-US citizens).
Certificates
We do NOT offer any state certificates; we are not affiliated with any association outside the BSG. We DO, however, include training to our students to be able to pass certain state or federal examinations (e.g. to obtain local licenses, if that is necessary or wanted), but such training will be offered by certain authorized, local BSG partners; this makes sense, since these partners are on the ground within the applicable jurisdiction in the various countries, meeting with the official standards required by the local official agency. The student will then take the exam necessary before the board of exam of the local agency involved. Other than that, please be aware that our certificates are meant to be BSG internal vocational certificates.
We operate this way because we KNOW for certain that many “official” standards are too low. They are too low in order to offer a way into security jobs for persons with less than academic capabilities. From a political standpoint, this might be ok; in order to make more jobs available for unemployed people who can't find other jobs. Many people (including in governments and companies!) think that many security related tasks can be done by just about ANYONE... and that's why certain security jobs are being so badly paid. We DO NOT think that way. That is why our courses are much different and much more comprehensive and we DO have some requirements and we will NOT admit just about anyone to our courses. We are doing that in order to RAISE THE LEVEL OF EXPERTISE AND PROFICIENCY of our graduates and staff. Since we offer a different and much more comprehensive training programme, there is no official agency taking exams for our courses. The official level more often than not simply is not high enough. That is why we needed to start offering our own certificates; if a student needs to take an additional official exam, e.g. in order to obtain a local license, we'll simply help him or her in doing so through one of our local and authorized BSG partners.
Also, our main goal still is to EMPLOY all of our graduates. We are an internationally very active security company, not just a training institute. We have hundreds of clients worldwide. We want to offer these clients the best possible service. Since we are convinced that our training and study courses are amongst the very best, we have every interest to keep our graduates on board after they completed the course. That is why we WANT to employ our own graduates. Now, as in every other large security company, we will prefer employing our own students rather than students from any other training institute. Other security companies will require their people to take their own courses, too. Apart from the “official” exams and licenses (as explained above), there are no worldwide or even nationwide by each employer or client fully acknowledged certificates outside university certificates, comprising the complete kind of training we offer.
You need to know about this and take it into consideration. If your aim is to get a government job, and you need an officially acknowledge certificate, you may want to go for a state or government accredited college or university. You will still NOT get the kind of training we can offer you and no guaranteed employment, but you will get an acknowledged certificate. Does that sound paradox? Yes, we know... But that’s the way it is. On the other hand, we do not recognize most non-BSG certificates either and won't employ applicants with just that "official" standard, because most of those kind of certificates included a training of only 3, 4months or less, which in our eyes simply does not suffice. We realize all this sounds complicated and absurd - but there are political and economic reasons behind this illogic situation which has been created that way by powers beyond our own sphere of influence. The truth is: there is no "official plan" for the BEST kind of private training, only for a MINIMAL standard. That is the secret behind this paradox.
Our new certificates are
· BSA Certificate Level 1 - basic level (formerly Associate Degree BSA)
· BSA Certificate Level 2 - high level certificate; this is the standard degree of most of our complete course (formerly BSA Bachelor's Degree)
· BSA Certificate Level 2+ - this is the BSA Top Level Certificate - (formerly BSA Master's Degree)
Level 1 Certificates are certificates the BSA awards for completing certain parts of some of our courses; it is a mid-term certificate. Also, we recognize certain other certificates issued by other schools or our associate and daughter companies, representatives etc. as Level 1 certificates. These certificates do NOT represent the full BSA level and thus do NOT include the guaranteed employment option. The latter is ONLY included with BSA Level 2 certificates and up.
A BSA Certificate Level 2+ are certificates we award for certain combined courses, e.g. if a student completes 2 or more combined courses such as PMO plus SpecOps or PASO plus the MOTT course etc.
We no longer use the former BSA Bachelor's Degree etc. For some time now, so-called "title mills" promote Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. degrees by e-mail. Those titles are bogus and can be bought for little money. We want to distance ourselves from such offers and in order to avoid confusion, we ceased to use these old degrees and as of now use the above mentioned certification ONLY.
The BSA is a private, fully independent institution, US based but operating internationally. We do not depend on government contracts or affiliated corporations, thus we are politically independent and much less effected by political fall-out. The crisis and scandals certain other security contractors are involved in do not concern our company. When the tide will turn (and one day soon it will), and Middle East contracts die and fade away, we will not be affected as much as others, since we never focussed so much on that region and operate on many different areas of security worldwide. Of course this means, at the same time, that our certificates and courses are not being government sponsored or accredited, and it's probably easy to understand why (e.g. we don't bow to certain people and politics and they have other “partners” for certain reasons); but within the large international BSG network, our own capabilities and markets are big enough to compensate for that and we think that it would require a step down the quality ladder if we tried to play according to certain other peoples rules and games.
The decision what each of our students requires and wants must be made by each of them individually. However, we are convinced that we are able to offer some of the finest study courses in the world. Compare for yourself. We are happy to discuss that matter with you any time.
Brillstein and Cobra Services LC
30 N Gould St Ste 40
Sheridan Wy. 82801 USA
USA
Feedback Form www.brillstein-security-academy.com www.brillstein-security-group.com
FAX: +1 307-900-3002