Practical personnel security for organisations that do not have a large security team.

Peacock Assurance was founded by Richard Peacock Assoc CIPD to provide specialist personnel security support to smaller organisations working with UK Government.

Richard spent 28 years with BT, including nearly two decades specialising in personnel security, security risk and related governance.

That experience included working with the practical side of personnel security: not simply whether a check had been completed, but how decisions are made, how risks are managed, how processes are governed and how an organisation demonstrates that what it says happens actually happens.

He is also an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

Why Peacock Assurance exists

Government suppliers can be expected to meet personnel security requirements regardless of whether they employ 50 people or 50,000.

The difference is that the smaller organisation may have one HR manager, a business owner and somebody who has just discovered that “security” has quietly appeared in their job description.

Peacock Assurance was created for that environment.

The aim is to provide the specialist knowledge that an SME may need without trying to recreate the bureaucracy of a large corporate security function.

That means understanding the requirement, looking at the evidence, identifying the real gap and recommending something proportionate enough that the organisation can actually operate it.

The approach

Understand the business first.

A technically correct process that nobody can operate is not much of a process.

Peacock Assurance therefore starts with the organisation, its requirement and its existing ways of working before assessing what needs to change.

The objective is not paperwork for paperwork's sake.

It is to help organisations build personnel security arrangements that are understandable, defensible and capable of being evidenced when somebody asks.