FORT STEWART, Ga. - An abstract thinker and otherwise private person, LeRoy H. Malphrus humbly accepted the top security award in front of colleagues and teammates Nov. 21. Fort Stewart's chief of intelligence received the Thomas Dillon Award, a namesake award recognized by the Department of the Army, Defense Intelligence-G2, for his superior contributions in areas involving security excellence.
"The word security is different depending on who you are talking to," Malphrus said. "For me it's academically interesting. "There are a lot of good security professionals out there and I just hope that I bring something to the table."
Malphrus shared that his line of work requires sharing of information and piecing that data together. Security education is at the very heart of keeping Soldiers, Family Members and Civilians safe with regards to many emerging threats.
"The emerging threat right now is the insider threat," Malphrus explained. "Nobody wants to think that your counterpart or the person next to you is going to be the person that kills you.
The threats right now are just drastically changing. I personally feel security education training is one of the solutions. It's cost effective and it's easy to teach people how to do it, but enforcing it involves being creative. People listen but they don't hear and that is the thing that you really have to get across to people."
Civilians on Stewart-Hunter have become well aware with changes in security training. An example of the change is the Threat Awareness and Reporting Program that has replaced the Security Education and Awareness Training. "The new program is focused more on the insider threat and those are things that we constantly look at," Malphrus explained.
Since 2007, Malphrus has supervised security programs that encompass information security, industrial security, personnel security and security education training awareness programs. In addition, he produces the Fort Stewart weekly security report, released each Thursday to security managers, covering a multitude of security concerns happening around the U.S. and in our geographic location. He admits that the weekly security report is one of his crown jewels and that that he takes personal interest in it.
On any given week, Malphrus reads more than 300 periodicals (including, newspapers, magazines and Web sites) to become familiar with current threats both domestic and global.
"Shred it-Don't share it," is another signature program that was developed under his leadership.
The program has since become an Installation Management Command best practice.
"Under garrison leadership we were working towards a 100 percent shred it policy because we were finding a bunch of stuff in dumpsters," Malphrus shared.
His team along with environmental personnel partners developed the pilot program more than a year and a half ago. Since inception, the quarterly program has shredded approximately 39 tons of unclassified information.
He and his team are also looking to find a solution for shredding classified documents. He is thrilled with the success of the program and says the only complaint is to offer the program more than once per quarter.
Malphrus, who studied Japanese fencing as a teen, believes that security is the foundation of everything.
"I'm constantly thinking two to three years ahead of what I need to do," Malphrus said. "You have to have a vision and decide to leave your finger print or a footprint. A foot print will have a larger impact and will always lead you in the right direction. That is the analogy that I use. It's a complicated process that is not absolute."
Malphrus works tirelessly to stay ahead in the information security age. He shared that back in the cold war era, information was containable with newspapers, magazines and word of mouth and with the explosion of the internet his job has its share of challenges.
"The threat is wide and varied," Malphrus said. "You have to look at established doctrine and sometimes it takes a while for doctrine to catch up with current trends."
After the passing of his father as a young boy, his Japanese fencing instructor became a second Family for him and helped to bridge the gap from his loss. The skills he learned while fencing helped to shape his moral compass.
He further explained that his second Family is what kept him out of trouble and helped him develop a good work ethic.
His military career began in 1977 and his duty positions included assignments as an infantryman, paratrooper, special operations and senior counterintelligence special agent in the Army. His duty assignments led him to Fort Stewart, Fort Bragg, N.C. and Vicenza, Italy.
The one constant throughout Malphrus' military and Civilian career, has been his wife Laura.
They've been married for 31 years and together they have two daughters Erica and Jaimie.
Thinking abstractly and outside of the box is what keeps this security chief motivated to excel.
"The hunt is what drives me, Malphrus said. "One thing I can say about security, I'm getting paid for something I enjoy doing. How many people can say that?"
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