BENELUX, Belgium (June 30, 2017) -- On May 16, Barbara Hunsberger, the USAG Benelux Operational Security program manager, a member of the garrison's S3-5-7, was awarded third place in the Army's 2017 Operations Security Competition. "OPSEC is the way that we protect our sensitive information from those who would want to harm our organization, our community members, or those who would want to take that information and use it for negative means," Hunsberger explained.
Each year, Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) looks at all the OPSEC programs in the Army, ranging in the thousands, and ask leaders to nominate their program managers. USAG Benelux leaders nominated Hunsberger in the Individual category for "her vast knowledge and experience, coupled with her initiative and can-do attitude." This year, three professionals were selected to be recognized. Hunsberger was one of them, the only civilian.
Prior to the Brussels airport terrorist attack, Hunsberger had been working diligently to develop and implement a new OPSEC program. Today, the USAG Benelux area of operations is considered to have one of the highest terrorist threats in Europe. In this context, Hunsberger's mission is essential to the Army. During a recent Higher Headquarters Inspection, her program was recognized for using a holistic framework, incorporating all communities into one program that ensures no OPSEC gaps exist.
"We have such a big organization and it's hard for me to go to every place and talk to people about OPSEC. I do VTC training where people from each location can get their OPSEC training. This year, we were able to bring in a team from the United States to Chièvres. All tenant units within the Benelux community were invited to attend OPSEC level II certification. These individuals are now qualified training instructors, they can go back to their organizations and teach OPSEC," Hunsberger explained.
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With this new system, most units have someone who is OPSEC level II trained and is qualified to teach others about the things that they should be protecting. "That's the first time that we've ever been able to do that here. Twenty people became OPSEC level II certified during that class and I've scheduled another training team to come back in September," Hunsberger said.
Training is not Hunsberger's sole mission. It's also her job to ensure that no sensitive information is released to the public. She sometimes visits schools and talks to children and family members about how to protect themselves, even in their own lives. "Like not posting on Facebook that their mom or dad is either deployed or being deployed to certain areas," Hunsberger said.
Hunsberger believes there is still a lot to do in the use of social networks, and some problems still occur. "A week ago a person saw something that he thought was not right and posted it on Facebook. It was the wrong thing to do. My job is to educate community members on proper reporting procedures, and to inform them of who in the Benelux community can assist them in accomplishing that," Hunsberger explained.
Today, her work is a model for other OPSEC managers. But she prefers to talk about the collective project and to look at the work still to be done. "Our leadership is allowing me to do the job to make our garrison safer, so I believe that the award is more of an organizational accomplishment than an individual one," Hunsberger concluded.
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