What You Told Us in Our Annual Membership Satisfaction Survey

We hear you loud and clear, SIA members!

SIA recently concluded its 2022 Membership Satisfaction and Awareness Survey, and we want to thank all of you who responded and share with you some of the top-line results. As part of the survey promotion, we randomly selected from the respondents a couple winners of two free tickets to the SIA event(s) of their choice. We’ll announce those on our LinkedIn page soon.

Let’s start with why: Why do we conduct this survey? We use this survey on a staff level to help us improve our benefits and services to you, and the information is directly shared with your board of directors so they have your input as they guide the association (speaking of guidance, we recommend you watch SIA Board Chair James Rothstein’s mid-year message here.) We use the quantitative data to balance the anecdotal input we get daily from direct conversations with members, and we appreciate that the anonymous nature of responses gives you greater freedom to respond.

Who Responded: Putting the Survey Into Context

To understand the results, it’s important to understand that most of the responses come from those in executive management, sales and marketing roles, but we also saw great diversity of responses from product management, operations, technology teams, HR and finance, so thank you for responses and candid feedback. One thing we should note is that this is the first time security systems integrators represented over a third of our survey responses. This is remarkable because our membership is approximately 52% manufacturers/software providers/product companies, and around 20% are integrators. So we can only hope the fact that so many integrators responded demonstrates the passion our integrator members have for SIA’s offerings, but we suspect it is also because you want your voices to be heard in a year plagued by talent shortages, inflation and supply chain issues.

What We Heard: The Top 7 Business Concerns

One of the ways we use the survey is to validate what your top business concerns are, and here’s what we heard are your top seven critical business issues:

1. Supply chain
2. Talent shortages
3. Cybersecurity concerns
4. Inflation
5. Industry consolidation
6. Lack of technology standards
7. Regulatory compliance

We use this list of top concerns to guide our efforts across many departments, from the work our government relations team does to the efforts of our standards department and certainly those of our learning and development team.

We ask a number of open-ended questions, and we love the positive feedback (e.g., “Keep putting out great articles and guidance on security standards”), but we also heard directly on needs like these examples: “Increase end-user/consumer participation in events” and “Continue to expand and update certifications.”

What You Love About SIA

Every year, we ask you to rank the SIA benefits, and every year events and networking have consistently come out on top. That makes sense; SIA’s mission is to help grow your businesses, so connecting you with others through networking and events is a core way we can deliver that opportunity to you. Here’s a glimpse of how you rank SIA’s top 10 benefits.

1. Events and networking
2. Brand awareness opportunities (speaking/presenting, content contribution, etc.)
3. Discounts and savings (SIA members save on registration for our courses and events, and many of you also take advantage of a rebate on exhibiting at ISC West thanks to your SIA membership).
4. Participation in committees/communities/working groups
5. Access to SIA’s research, publications and reports
6. Participation in SIA standards initiatives
7. SIA’s government relations and advocacy work
8. Learning and development opportunities
9. Workforce development efforts
10. Certification offerings

One quick note: We also surveyed our RISE community of young professionals (YPs) in the security industry to see how their responses would differ, and as YPs are growing their careers, the data was noticeably different. For one, learning and development opportunities was ranked No. 1, pushing “events and networking” into the No. 2 position and “brand awareness opportunities” into No. 3. Rounding out the top five benefits for young professionals were “certification offerings” and then the “discounts and savings” that come with being a SIA member.

We also offered you to call out more specific benefits, and here are the top five specific benefits you mentioned as being particularly meaningful:

1. Speaking opportunities
2. Young professional programs
3. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs
4. SIA Education@ISC conference programs
5. Vertical market research and events

What You Want More of

The open-ended responses to our questions about how we can develop new programs and build new value for you are incredibly useful. Here’s what we heard:

That’s Rita Mounir, co-founder and chief operating officer of Allthenticate (and vice chair of the SIA Membership Engagement and Experience Committee) holding up a sign to reflect your feedback that we invest more in vertical markets, be that research into these sectors, best practices guidance or events. Good news: We continue to expand the Vertical Insights Symposium Series, and we continue to invest in outside research created exclusively for SIA members that studies select vertical markets. We’ve also begun to produce a series of vertical market-focused Practitioner Insights reports, which share end-user insights into securing their specific verticals.

That’s Diane Ritchey, the marketing director for Zenitel (and another proud member of the SIA Membership Engagement and Experience Committee) conveying to us your desire for even more in-person mixers. Good news on that front. SIAThere! returns to an in-person format in New Jersey in less than one month (yes, we know you loved virtual SIAThere! events but do love to meet IRL, too!). SIA is looking to schedule more SIAThere! events and has expanded our D.C. presence in networking with the SIA National Capital Region Security Forum (NCRSF) events (NCRSF is now part of SIA, in case you missed that news earlier this year).

And that’s DeAndre Thornton, SIA’s learning and development coordinator, holding up a sign to reflect your input that you value SIA’s training offerings and want to see even more in this area. Already, SIA is doubling down in this area, and we’ve seen growth in the number of Security Project Management courses we offer, plus a review course for our Certified Security Project Manager (CSPM) credential and a review course coming soon for our Security Industry Cybersecurity Certification (SICC), along with virtual courses like our SIAcademy LIVE! series. Rest assured, the SIA learning and development team is 100% invested in delivering more training for you.

Lastly, we want to close with a look at whether you would recommend SIA to a colleague or another industry company. We are honored that more than 96% of you would actively recommend SIA. In fact, as SIA Membership Services Director Kevin Murphy often remarks, “Members like doing business with members,” and we know that when a member spreads the word about SIA, their authentic enthusiasm for this volunteer-driven organization is unstoppable.

Thank you for allowing us to serve you, and while our membership satisfaction survey is closed for 2022, we always seek your input. Head to the SIA staff page here, and reach out to any of our staff members at any time to learn how to get more involved, answer your questions or provide direct feedback on how we can better serve you.