I belong to six professional organizations. Or maybe it’s 13, 19, 26, or 47. I can’t be sure. The ones where I pay dues or volunteer I know well: ASIS International, the Life Safety Alliance, Chartered Security Professionals, and a couple of others. Then come the niche and industry-specific associations like the International Council of Shopping Centers, public-private partnerships such as OSAC and Infragard, and the countless ASIS Communities.

But wait, there’s more.

There are conference cohorts like the Security 500 Conference network. Digital communities like the National Insider Threat Special Interest Group. Expert-witness registries. Local civic groups. Professional identity networks like Don Morron’s AI PHYSEC TODAY. And, of course, the osmotic Friends of Chuck (FOC).

You get the point. We are awash in security and risk-based associations, societies, alliances, committees, and groups.

Most of these organizations have value and fierce advocates. They may all be necessary, or at least worthwhile to someone. But it gets confusing. In physical security alone, we have associations for general practitioners, senior executives, manufacturers, consultants, integrators, executive protection agents, officers, guard companies, and more.

So do we have too many associations? Or is the market simply meeting its own expanding demand? How should practitioners decide which deserve time and money? And, most relevant to this column, are we creating silos or complementary centers of excellence? If the latter, how do we connect them?

Chuck Andrews has held senior volunteer roles across ASIS, the International Foundation for Protection Officers, ACFE, the International Society of Crime Prevention Practitioners, the Energy Security Council, and more. Best known as the founder of FOC, a 100,000+-member global networking enterprise, he believes we’ve reached critical mass. “We’ve reached proliferation, not optimization,” Andrews says. “The problem isn’t quantity. It’s the lack of coordination.”

Christopher Stitt, CEO of CrisisLead and author of Scaling Pyramids: Leadership Lessons from a Mid-Level Bureaucrat, agrees that coordination is lacking but disagrees on saturation. “As the industry evolves, there will be calls for new organizations more narrowly focused on topics such as agentic AI,” he says. But he cautions that without deliberate communication, these groups risk becoming “thick-walled silos that prevent information exchange with the larger community.”

Nick Koziara, a corporate security manager and member of ISC2, IFPO, Infragard, TINYg, and ASIS, lands in between. “If we're not at the saturation point, we're definitely rapidly approaching it,” he says. “Attending even a significant portion of their events becomes a challenge, and that leads to diminishing returns on membership value.”

Some practitioners welcome the proliferation. Paul Michaels, a CSO and founder of a leadership forum, says new organizations counterbalance legacy groups that drift from their core mission. Parvenu organizations, he notes, “force legacy groups to remain relevant, and often deliver more focused, practical value at a lower cost.”

Garry Bergin, a highly decorated Irish security consultant with senior roles in ISRM, IFPO, and the Security Institute of Ireland, sees something else driving the growth. “Everyone has to find their niche,” he says. “Everyone wants to be everything to everybody. They all say, ‘We are the gold standard.’” He adds that many new groups appear, and disappear, within a year.

Competition among associations isn’t always benign. Feuds and turf battles emerge when multiple groups claim the same mandate. Even when groups get along, practitioners still face hard choices about where to invest limited budget and attention. As Koziara puts it, “When organizations complement each other across verticals or career stages, it works great; but when they become redundant and you need to pick favorites, everyone’s going to lose eventually.”

Niche groups — for NGOs, privacy professionals, intelligence analysts, and others — offer targeted expertise, but Andrews warns that the line between specialization and duplication is thin. “Specialization strengthens expertise,” he says, “but duplication fragments influence and confuses emerging leaders.” Bergin adds another complication: ego. “The problem in the industry is ego and testosterone,” he says — forces that can make collaboration harder than it needs to be.

Despite that, Bergin argues that collaboration is the key to everything. “In Ireland, I sit on nearly all the boards,” he says. “I pull them all together toward the end of the year.” His annual convenings bring multiple associations — professional, academic, and volunteer — into the same room. “We even issue a certificate with everyone’s logos. Everyone gets credit. Everyone participates.”

Collaboration is also the hallmark of the Life Safety Alliance (full disclosure: I serve as its president), which was founded on the premise that influence grows when groups coordinate rather than compete.

Asked where collaboration would most benefit the profession, Andrews doesn’t hesitate: bridging the longstanding divide between corporate security and law enforcement. “The two largest ecosystems in this profession barely collaborate at scale,” he laments.

Stitt points to another missed connection: ASIS and the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM). “Emergency management is a huge part of the security profession,” he says, yet IAEM, focused on government, often overlooks private-sector engagement.

Michaels, who helped architect collocated ASIS–Infragard events, believes collaboration can be structured and replicable. “Security organizations can collaborate like academic institutions,” he says, “through jointly hosted conferences, shared publications, co-sponsored seminars, and integrated training programs.”

So how do security and risk professionals choose wisely among the hundreds of options? Andrews recommends a disciplined ROI lens: “Choose associations that expand your network, sharpen your craft, and put you in rooms that lead to opportunity. If you don’t get articulable ROI, move on.” Stitt offers a simple starting model: pick two: “a large umbrella organization such as ASIS or SIA, and a smaller one that provides focus and context to what you actually work on.”

Perhaps security doesn’t suffer from too many associations but from too little integration. The leaders who will thrive in the coming decade aren’t the ones who join everything, but the ones who join wisely, show up fully, and help stitch the profession together.