Humorous OPSEC poster strikes judges' fancy

By Mr. Robert Timmons (IMCOM)July 9, 2015

Congratulations!
1 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Capt. Alicia Scott, a Captain's Career Course instructor at the Adjutant General's School, beams after receiving a congratulatory letter from Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, Deputy Chief of Staff, G3/5/7. Scott and her teammate, Maj. Joaquin DeQuintanaroo... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL
OPSEC - Don't look the other way
2 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

A few minutes was all it took for the Adjutant General School's operation security officer to come up with the winning idea for an Army-level award.

Maj. Joaquin DeQuintanaroo, an instructor and OPSEC officer at the AG School, came up with the idea for the "OPSEC Bandit" poster when he noticed the amount of personally identifiable information being shredded in his office.

"It took 10 minutes to come up with the idea" for the poster selected as first-place winner in the Multimedia Achievement/Print category of the 2014 Army OPSEC Award competition, he said.

Collaboration among members of his office helped round out creation of the poster.

DeQuintanaroo's teaching partner, Capt. Alicia Scott, appeared in the poster with him while another team member took the photo.

The team merged the poster with that of the Soldier Support Institute before submitting the entry.

In the poster, DeQuintanaroo -- wearing a bandit mask poached from Scott's Halloween costume -- reaches out from a recycling bin to steal information from Scott as she turns her back. He had to lie sideways to fit into the bin and was wedged in so tight he couldn't touch the bottom.

He thought the poster was "pretty good" after he came up with the name "OPSEC Bandit," but the Scott said she was shocked when she found out it had won.

Creating the OPSEC poster was fun, but its subject matter is no laughing matter for Captain's Career Course instructors.

"The project opens up your eyes, not only at the schoolhouse but everywhere I go," DeQuintanaroo said. "I'm outside analyzing what's going on around me.

"I have heard people around me saying what they are going to do this weekend. I don't know them, but I am an earshot away. It would take nothing to follow them and come back when they are gone and rob them.

"With (the Middle Eastern Islamist militant group) ISIS using social media, it is now more important than ever (to practice OPSEC). Everything we do is out there for the world to see."

Scott agreed that OPSEC was a necessary practice to teach future battalion-level personnel officers.

"We are teaching them to become S-1s, where they have access to everyone's personnel files," she said. "It's important to protect yourself. It's important to encrypt your emails."

DeQuintanaroo added: "We try to teach handling (personal identifiable information) as real as possible to create muscle memory."

The two plan to submit an entry into a different category in this year's competition, which will be in early November.