During Wallace Dalrymple, the first Global Chief Security Officer’s visit to India, The Pioneer connects with the connoisseur, who shares his role as a chief security officer, providing at-home experience, the credibility of the premium tests, and much more.
Amartya Smaran
Anyone with the slightest desire to fly abroad for higher education is ought to fulfill the minimum criterion of excelling either at the GRE or TOEFL amongst other tests.Educational Testing Service- ETS is a seventy-five-year-old not-for-profit testing and assessment organisation. ETS is responsible for administering and scoring over fifty million tests including GRE, TOEFL, and The Praxis Series in more than 180 countries.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, we all have come across instances of test takers indulging in malpractices. Envisaging a total curtail of notorious practices, ETS has appointed Wallace Dalrymple as its first Global Chief Security Officer to oversee the security features which entail the deployment of real-time human monitoring, AI technology, videotaping of tests, ID review, and gaze tracking. Thereby, raising the quality of testing integrity.
With regard to it, The Pioneer seized the opportunity to have a wonderful interaction with ETS’ first Global Chief Security Officer. On his first trip to India, Wallace Dalrymple patiently discussed the objectives he set out for the 75-year-old organization and let us in on what success means to him.
Wallace Dalrymple is super pleased to have been the first appointment of ETS. Talking more about his role as the Chief Security officer, he enthused, “Being the first chief security officer, for me, it shows the value that ETS has for education and test security education. It feels great to come out here on my very first trip. So, I’ve been with the company for just over two months. It is exciting to see the value of educational assistance in India. The country has the youngest demographic in the world and the stakes are always high with TOEFL and GRE tests.
Therefore, getting the opportunity to meet with folks here and talk about how we’re building security into TOEFL, GRE, and Praxis Tests is just amazing. Certainly, throughout my 30 years in IT, I value education. I’m one of those people who believes in continuous learning. I told my kids the same thing, I said, dad’s advice is to never stop learning. No matter what jobs you have in the future, education will always be there to support you. I value education and that’s why I came to ETS.”
We at The Pioneer were genuinely curious about how ETS measures the credibility of these premium tests. To which, Wallace quickly responded, “From my perspective, it’s all about helping the honest test takers achieve their results and goals of attending tests like GRE.
GRE’s are now even used for law school entrances as well. It’s all about, how can we protect the integrity of the test score. So, I want my test score to provide value whether it’s TOEFL or GRE. To me, it’s about protecting the test score integrity because it has to mean something and if the score doesn’t mean anything. Especially in India, where there are about 120 test centers, we are committed to bringing value to students who take these tests. Testing is not the most inexpensive thing to do, right? If you’re gonna take your own time to study and make the investment, then the test has to provide some value. ETS hired me to come in and say, Wally! we need your help to protect the security of those scores because as we know, we’ll never be able to stop all the cheating right in the world. It’ll never get down to zero. If there was a silver bullet, I think someone would have found it long before I came on board.”
With the multiple lockdowns imposed by the government due to the Covid-19 pandemic, ETS has provided students an opportunity to take tests at home. In the hindsight, the organisation had to ramp up its surveillance for the new format. “We have an at-home capability and we’re still able to protect the test score integrity, which is not an easy thing to do. In a test center, you’re in a much more controlled environment, but now if you’re allowed to take the test at home, which we provide post-Covid, our digital strategy accelerated with Covid. Now we’re able to take that same security capability that was in the test center and we’re now able to provide that in the at-home environment,” reiterated Wallace.
He further added, “It’s funny all the ways that people work on trying to cheat or commit fraud versus the time that it takes just to study and be successful on the test. I sort of focus on what are those emerging threats and now that I’m on board, I said, we have to have a security presence in India and so we’re building that security precedence. I like to call it boots on the ground. We have to have people here to represent security within ETS, to support the team and the office that’s here. We’re gonna hire security professionals here to help mitigate those threats. The goal is to block people from trying to come up with creative ways to cheat. If we can’t block, then we do real-time-based detection.We monitor things that don’t look right, and then we go back and investigate it and if we find the student guilty, we cancel the test.”
Finally, musing on the vision that he set forward for ETS, Wallace wrapped the interview by saying, “I want to enable the Indian students to be successful and take a test that provides value. At the end of the day, if someone says ETS helped me be successful by preparing and having a test like the GRE or TOEFL that allowed me to get into the university or school of their choice that would be heartwarming. If I was a part of helping students be successful, then I will be happy that I contributed to society.”
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