Frequently Asked Questions:
About the PSA Courses
VIRSEC do have a Chat Facility on their website, and you may make a request for support. However, this is only manned during the hours listed on its website [0900 to 1700 hrs GMT/BST Monday to Thursday, 0900 to 1500 hrs Friday, Closed Saturday & Sunday and Bank Holidays]. Responses to comments or enquiries may take up to 24 hours, or until the next working day as detailed.
You can purchase and take our courses anytime; 24/7, 365 days a year through our e-commerce site. Our team operates during office hours (Mon to Thu 0900-1700 GMT/BST, Fri 0900-1500; closed weekends & Bank Holidays). Limited out-of-hours support is available for minor issues, while major technical requests will be handled during office hours.
If you leave your course to the last minute, VIRSEC cannot guarantee same-day certificate issuance. Certificates typically take up to 48 hours on working days, and requests over weekends or Bank Holidays will be processed the next working day. Expedited certificates may be requested for an additional fee but are not guaranteed.
Yes, we provide a hard copy version of the certificate, but there is an additional charge for this.
When you complete the course correctly and pass the Official Proctored Assessment, we will verify your time spent on the course, your submitted ID, and your Official Proctored Assessment feedback. Once we are satisfied, we will email you a secure PDF of your certificate that you must print off and sign. These PDFs are security encrypted to prevent any tampering with information placed on them, and so you must print them off to sign with as black pen.
No, both the PSA course and AI Proctored Assessment are entirely online. You must follow all course requirements, including submitting your Learner Verification and completing the online proctored assessment.
The Proficiency in Security Awareness (PSA) Course includes an assessment after the three Learning Outcomes. You must score at least 70% to pass. The proctored assessment uses AI and features randomly selected multiple-choice and true/false questions from two question banks. It is open book, allowing the use of your notes and official course materials. Please refer to our detailed FAQs for more detailed information on the AI Proctored Assessments.
No prior service, rank, or position affects course requirements. This STCW ISPS course has a minimum time set by the Awarding and Governing Bodies. Failing to meet these requirements will result in course failure, regardless of assessment scores, and you will need to retake the course and/or assessments.
Completing the course too quickly or below the minimum required time will result in failure. Treat this online course as you would a classroom-based approved course. A slight timing variance is allowed for individual reading speeds.
You can pause the course anytime, and regular breaks are encouraged. For longer breaks, please log out, your progress will be saved, and you can resume where you left off. Leaving the course open during an extended break will result in loss of progress.
As there is no timer function on the course itself due to the ability to exit and enter at will, you must ensure that you track your own time, so you know that you are spending sufficient time on the course. VIRSEC report on the total time spent on the course via the LMS reporting system. This will be used to determine from their side how much time you have spent on the course.
Yes, under the relevant Agencies and Conventions, the Security Awareness is a 4-hour course. This excludes any video content we have included [for interest], viewing of any websites linked from the course or documents also linked from the course. We allow a slight variation in timings due to individual reading speeds, but we will fail you if you exceed the allowed variance. Simply passing the assessment is not sufficient. Both the minimum required learning time and satisfactory assessment score are required to successfully complete this course. Please note that the Course Notes are purely there for reference and revision, and any time spent reading these do not count towards your time spent on the course.