“Clearances are usually valid for five years, and they go with the individual.”
Wrong, they’re good for 10 years, at least the TS-SCI I had lasted from the beginning 1995 till the end of 2004. Also, I worked for Titan Corp at the time and they’re the ones that owned my TS-SCI, when we lost a contract and I went to work for ESN, they had to negotiate with Titan to take control of that clearance or I would have had to start the TS-SCI process over again had Titan not agreed to relinquish it.
Ref. 10 years: that was a previous policy. TS clearance re-investigations are on a 5-year basis now.
Ref. clearance: Titan wouldn’t own your clearance. They would own the billet which your clearance was associated with. The clearance is yours, not the company’s. So, if you went from one contractor to another, the responsible officials holding your clearance (at Titan) would have to do what they call a transfer-in-status to ESN in order for your access to remain active without interruption.
Bottom line: if you have a clearance but you’re not in a cleared billet, you won’t have access to classified information.
Under the current guidance, TS clearances are good for six years and those of Secret are 10 years.