The Importance of Securing Sensitive Items

The Importance of Keeping Sensitive Items Secure

In the perfect world, everyone would live happily together without dispute, without conflict and honesty would reign. People of all nations would reach agreements peaceful, trust and loyalty would be top priority and the need for military forces would cease to exist.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world and the need for military forces is very real. There are numerous adversaries out there who would like nothing better than to destroy our way of life. They are looking for every opportunity to gain an advantage to accomplish their goal. As soldiers we must do everything within our power to limit our opposition in succeeding at their mission. This means taking care of the obvious, but also paying attention to the details -Maintaining accountability and security of sensitive items.

Sensitive items can include all of your protective gears, lists of things to do, maps or even an envelope with personal information on it. Securing these sensitive items comes down to maintaining operational security which in turn increases each individual soldiers overall readiness and also mission success. Exercising the habit of maintaining accountability and security of sensitive items of a soldier allows each team to operate at peak performance, especially when the threat of opposing adversaries accessing these sensitive items is lessened.

The best method to keep a sensitive item secure is to always have it one your person. The problem with this method is it's not always possible. Toting around everything of value would be a very tedious and inefficient process. That's where secondary measures come in to play. When sensitive items are not on your person or out of your sight they should always be kept under lock and key. They should be left in a place where security is in place to guard those items. The level of security usually depends on how sensitive the item is.

It all comes down to Operational Security which is everyone's responsibility. Each individual soldier must play an active role in keeping sensitive items out of the enemies grasp. Army Regulation 530-1, it states the following;

"Operations security is everyone's responsibility. Failure to properly implement OPSEC measures can result in serious injury or death to our personnel, damage to weapons systems, equipment and facilities, loss of sensitive technologies and mission failure. OPSEC is a continuous process and an inherent part of military culture and as such, must be fully integrated into the execution of all Army operations and supporting activities." pg. 4 AR 530-1

This mean OPSEC as a process and a complete way of thinking should be taken seriously by everyone. Each person at every level should know what their organization considers to be critical information, where it is located, who