OPSEC - You are a vital player in our success!

NAVY INFORMATION OPERATIONS COMMAND

OPSEC OPERATIONS SECURITY

A guide for the family

You are a vital player in our success!

As a family member of the military community, you are a vital player in our success, and we couldn’t do our job without your support. You may not know it, but you also play a crucial role in ensuring your loved ones safety just by what you know of the military’s day-to-day operations. You can protect your loved ones by protecting the information that you know. This is known in the military as operations security or, OPSEC.

What is OPSEC?

OPSEC is keeping potential adversaries from discovering our critical information. As the name suggests, it protects our operations – planned, in progress and those completed. Success depends on secrecy and surprise, so the military can accomplish the mission quicker and with less risk. Enemies of freedom want our information, and they’re not just after the military member to get it. They want you, the family member.

What can you do?

There are many countries and organizations that would like to harm Americans and degrade our influence in the world. It’s possible and not unprecedented for spouses and family members of U.S. military personnel to be targeted for intelligence collection. This is true in the United States, and especially true overseas! What can you do?

BE ALERT

Foreign Governments and organizations can collect significant amounts of useful information by using spies. A foreign agent may use a variety of approaches to befriend someone and get sensitive information. This sensitive information can be critical to the success of a terrorist or spy, and consequently deadly to Americans.

BE CAREFUL

There may be times when your spouse cannot talk about the specifics of his or her job. It’s very important to conceal and protect certain information such as flight schedules, ship movements, TDY locations, and installation activities, just to name a few. Something as simple as a phone discussion concerning where your spouse is going TDY or deploying to can be very useful to our adversaries.

Protecting Critical Information

Even though this information may not be secret, it’s what we call “critical information.” Critical Information deals with specific facts about military intentions, capabilities, operations or activities. If an adversary knew this detailed information, our mission accomplishment and personnel safety could be jeopardized. It must be protected to ensure an adversary doesn’t gain a significant advantage.

By being a member of the military family, you will often know some bits of critical information. Do not discuss them outside of your immediate family and especially not over the telephone.

Examples of critical information:

- Detailed information about mission of assigned units.

- Details concerning locations and times of unit deployments.

- Personnel transactions that occur in large numbers (e.g. pay information, power of attorney, wills, deployment information).

- References to trend in unit morale or personnel problems.

- Details concerning security procedures.

Puzzle pieces

These bits of information may seem insignificant. However, to a trained adversary, they are small pieces of a puzzle that highlight what we’re doing and planning. Remember, the elements of security and surprises are vital to the accomplishment of our goals and our collective personnel protection.

Where and how you discuss this information is just as important as with whom you discuss it. Adversary’s agents tasked with collecting information frequently visit some of the same stores, clubs, recreational areas or places of worship as you do.

Determined individuals can easily collect data from cordless and cellular phones and even baby monitors using inexpensive receivers available from local electronics stores.

If anyone, especially a foreign national, persistently seeks information, notify your military sponsor immediately. He or she will notify the unit OPSEC program manager or local office of investigations.

OPSEC IS A FAMILY AFFAIR

I consider OPSEC a vital element in protecting the Navy's missions and service members, and I want to stress the vital role every member of the Navy team plays in ensuring we deny our adversaries potentially useful information.

We cannot afford to let our guard down whether we are on duty or off duty. Your diligence in OPSEC is key to ensuring our effectiveness in the Navy operations and our collective safety.

Thank you!

Thank you for taking the time to read this guide. Our goal is to provide you with a greater understanding of our security concerns. The information in this guide is not intended to make you paranoid or suspicious that everyone you meet is a secret agent or terrorist. But, stay alert – if any stranger shows excessive interest in the affairs of your family members, military or not notify the authorities.

From your OPSEC friends

“Information Warriors”

COMMAND OPSEC OFFICER:

(301) 688 – 2206 / 2223