As departments and groups across UNC-Chapel Hill gradually implement the year-old Sensitive Information Remediation Project, employees of these units also have come to rely on the peace of mind that the initiative delivers.
Christopher Derickson, Assistant Provost and University Registrar, is one such person who values Information Technology Services’ sensitive information campaign, also known as Project SIR. The ITS initiative entails providing the tools, procedures and reporting necessary to help data owners discover all of the sensitive information they they may have and providing options to delete and/or secure that information. Identity Finder is the application that assists faculty and staff in scanning their computers and other online file space to identify sensitive information and securely delete, modify or migrate documents containing this information to secure storage environment.
Here’s what Derickson has to say about Project SIR:
“The Project SIR effort has been an invaluable experience for the Office of the University Registrar. With a number of processes that regularly involve the collection of sensitive data, there was already a pretty high level of knowledge within the office about the storage and retention of documents with sensitive information. However, the Identity Finder tool has further raised awareness of this issue, while providing a very thorough but also very straightforward process for scanning and then cleaning everyone’s machines in the office.
Training your staff about the risks of storing sensitive data on local or shared drives is obviously the starting point, but Project SIR has provided a critical opportunity for further discussing those risks with my staff while, even more importantly, providing a critical safety net in that we are able to run regular and complete scans of all computers in the office to ensure compliance with the office policies on storing sensitive data.
I couldn’t be happier with this overall process and what it means for protecting sensitive data that we are required to collect.”