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.

Background Investigations

KeyPoint Government Solutions (KPGS) announced that is it has doubled its caseload following the downfall of USIS and the subsequent reassignment of their cases over to KPGS and CACI. According to a story published in FedBiz, KPGS has had to borrow $22 million in order to meet the increased workload

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Adjudication

In May 2012 the DOD made the decision to consolidate all of the various component Central Adjudication Facilities (CAF) into one in order to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and standardize the adjudicative process across the spectrum to develop a level of trust when applying reciprocity. The transition phase started in

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Career Advice

For security-clearance holders, flat is the new up, when it comes to salaries and earnings. The good news is trends may grow more optimistic going forward. A Washington Post article discussed recent trends in security clearance compensation and the possible reasons for the decline.  When it comes to surveying salary,

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Background InvestigationsCybersecurity

In a follow up to a previous article highlighting how Chinese hackers attack U.S. networks, another story has hit the news headlines describing how former background investigation contractor USIS failed to detect a security breach by Chinese hackers who penetrated USIS information system firewalls for several months. The hackers gained

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