Library IT Help Desk, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library

Library IT Desk Help Desk ››SSN Removal Instructions for Circulation Workstations

SSN Removal Instructions for Circulation Desk Workstations

As recently announced the Urbana campus has embarked on a major initiative to remove electronic files containing Social Security numbers from all faculty and staff workstations.
If you supervise your unit's circulation desk, you are responsible for analyzing the scan results for the circulation desk workstation(s) in your unit.
The following instructions explain how to:
1) use campus-approved software (Firefly) to scan circulation workstation and identify files that need attention;
2) analyze the results of your scan;
3) remediate any files that need attention;
4) notify the Office of Library IT that you have completed this task.
Note: all these steps must be completed by no later than January 7, 2008.

Scanning your PC:

Analyzing the results of your scan:

When you logon to the circulation workstation as yourself after the scan has been completed, your scan results will appear in the C drive as "Firefly SSN FinderReport.htm"
In the results file you may find several files that have been falsely flagged by the scan program--due to the fact that the program flags all 9 digit numbers as "Possible SSN".
You can generally ignore files that are marked "Possible SSN" and fall into one of the two following categories:
1) the file is located in the C:|Windows, C:\WINNT, or C:\Program Files folders;
2) the file has a filetype of .log or .dat
If the file is flagged "Formatted SSN", it should be examined further.

Remediating files that need attention

If you find files containing Social Security numbers and you no longer need access to the SSNs, you have three choices:
1) edit the file to remove the SSN;
2) delete the file entirely;
3) contact Joanne Kaczmarek, Archivist for Electronic Records, to arrange for archiving of official records.
If you find files containing Social Security numbers and you need continued access to this data for work-related purposes, please note this fact when turning in your report to the Office of Library IT (see the next step.)
Note: The Office of Library IT is investigating appropriate procedures for faculty/staff whose work requires access to SSN data stored locally on their workstations.

Notifying the Office of Library IT that your have completed the above tasks

1) Print the results files. Annotate the printouts to indicate the files that were corrected. No annotation is needed for files that were incorrectly flagged by the scan program.
2) Write the following information on the first page of each results file: your NET ID, the inventory tag number on the circulation workstation (found on the white label on the CPU), and the computer name (found by clicking on the "Computer Information" icon on the circulation machine desktop.)
3) Turn in the printed and annotated results files to Kim Matherly (230 Library, MC-522) by no later than January 7, 2008.