One Step Ahead
March 4, 2008, Volume 54, No. 24	Print Issue

Another tip in a series provided by the Offices of Information Systems & Computing and Audit, Compliance & Privacy.

People who think even a little bit about protecting the privacy and security of Penn data do a lot of good. Keeping privacy and security in mind for faculty and staff has paid great dividends. 

The more people think about privacy, the more people clean their offices of sensitive data that no longer needs to be retained, who raise security questions with third parties working with Penn data and who offer data subjects opt-in or opt-out choice for certain unexpected uses of their data. All of these types of activities, and many others, help protect the privacy of Penn constituents and create a stronger data environment to support many critical activities across the University.

There are many ways to create a privacy-sensitive environment. These “One Step Ahead” tips themselves may be replicated in newsletters, e-mails, and through an available i-Frame on Internet sites and Intranet sites. Staff meetings can be devoted to brainstorming on privacy and security risks in a local environment and strategies to remediate those risks. Staff can be asked to review and sign confidentiality statements—a model statement is available on the PennPrivacy website. Penn’s Privacy or Security office personnel can deliver awareness sessions at office meetings. Extra privacy and security brochures can be requested for delivery to offices. The list goes on.

  Consider what would best suit the needs of your office to emphasize the importance of privacy and security issues and to enlist a broader community of faculty and staff working to protect the privacy of Penn constituents.

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To receive weekly OneStepAhead  tips via email, send email to listserv@lists.upenn.edu with the following text in the body of the message:  sub one-step-ahead <your name>.

For additional tips, see the One Step Ahead link on the Information Security website: www.upenn.edu/computing/security/.