Pau Davis
Paul Davis, writes in Business Know How: As we’ve seen in recent events, both large and small businesses have been targeted by criminals, spies and terrorists.
Large businesses have the resources to employ security professionals who can install security countermeasures to protect their businesses and their people. But what can a small business person do to protect themselves and their business?
You can learn about OPSEC.
Operations Security, or OPSEC, is simply an analytic process that is used to deny an adversary or competitor information that would harm you and benefit them. OPSEC is used to keep threats to your business – criminals, terrorists and others – from discovering critical information about your activities, your business, and yourself.
What can a person observe about your schedule? What are you revealing by your predictable routines and the way you do business? These are OPSEC Indicators. OPSEC helps people identify the indicators that are giving away critical information to people who may want to harm you.
The five basic steps of OPSEC are:
- Identify critical information.
- Analyze threats.
- Analyze vulnerabilities.
- Assess risk.
- Apply countermeasures.
The process is not that complicated once you learn about OPSEC through training.
While serving in the U.S. Navy on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War I was trained in physical security, communications security and OPSEC. Later, as the administrative officer of a Defense Department command, I was the OPSEC trainer for our command’s military and civilian employees.
It occurred to me that as defense contractors have long used OPSEC to protect both government and corporate information, OPSEC practices could also be beneficial to small business owners.
To learn more about OPSEC I contacted Chris Cox, the president of the Operations Security Professional Association (OSPA). Below is my Q & A interview with him:
Read the whole interview here at Business Know How
