Suggested Text For Units To Send To Faculty/Staff

This page contains example text to help communicate the obligations of the SSN program.

The following is suggested text that can help your unit communicate the obligations of the Social Security Number (SSN) program to your faculty and staff members.

Colleagues,

As you may know the campus has embarked on a major initiative to remove electronic documents that contain Social Security numbers from faculty and staff workstations. This project represents a major milestone in the elimination of SSNs from the campus computing environment, an effort that began with the creation of a University-wide SSN policy in 2000 (see: http://www.ssn.uillinois.edu). At the request of the Provost and Chancellor, each academic and administrative unit will be required to certify that they have met the conditions of this program which includes having every faculty and staff member search for and remove or secure files containing SSNs from their systems.

Within <<insert your unit name here>> I have asked <<insert program coordinator name here>> to oversee our compliance efforts. Please bring your questions about whether specific files are records we should retain or delete to <<him or her>> and whether or not you believe you currently have or require access to SSNs to perform your job function. The campus Security Office has published some guidelines and search tools to assist you with the process of searching your systems at http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/ssnprogram/ssnscanning.html.

Please note that while I recognize that performing this search is an inconvenience, I consider it essential for protecting our staff and students from potential identity theft as well as minimizing the disruption from future computer security incidents. If you need assistance installing or using the available search tools, please contact <<insert your unit's IT support here>> for assistance and to answer questions. In addition the CITES Help Desk is prepared to take questions via email or over the phone (http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/help).

All scanning and file remediation should be completed by February 14, 2008.

many thanks,