PERSEC (Personal Security) is a term used in military and security communities to describe protecting personal information that, if disclosed, could enable harm to an individual or their family.
PERSEC differs from OPSEC in scope: OPSEC protects operational information (plans, capabilities), while PERSEC protects personal information (home address, family members, daily routine).
Practical PERSEC: not posting home addresses, not sharing deployment schedules or return dates, not revealing children’s schools, understanding that aggregated innocuous details can reveal sensitive information. Adversaries actively monitor social media to construct profiles of military personnel and their families.
What it means in practice
PERSEC failures in military families include posting deployment schedules, tagging the installation in photos, discussing unit movements on social media, and using location-sharing apps that reveal routine and absence patterns. The family home is unoccupied during deployment — its location, layout, and routine are information with real physical security implications. The same habits that create social media engagement create operational exposure.
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