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OPerations
SECurity) Determining what information is publicly available in the normal course of operations that can be used by a competitor or enemy to its advantage. OPSEC is a common military practice that is also applied to civilian projects such as the development of new products and technologies.
The Official Definition
From the JP 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Operations security (OPSEC) is a process of identifying critical information and subsequently analyzing friendly actions attendant to military operations and other activities to: (a) identify those operations that can be observed by adversary intelligence systems; (b) determine what indicators adversary intelligence systems might obtain that could be interpreted or pieced together to derive critical information in time to be useful to adversaries; and (c) select and execute measures that eliminate or reduce to an acceptable level the vulnerabilities of friendly actions to adversary exploitation. See
DOD cyberspace glossary and
DOD intelligence glossary.