[CCoE Notice] FW: UIT Security Alert: Data breach at local university

[Khator, Suresh]

Dear College of Engineering Faculty and Staff,

Please read this email from Mary regarding security of student's personal data.  If you need any help, please contact, John Young (cjyoung at egr.uh.edu<mailto:cjyoung at egr.uh.edu> ), Director of Engineering Computing or Mary Dickerson, Director, IT Security.

Thank you for your consideration,

Suresh Khator
_______________________________________________________
Suresh K. Khator, Ph.D., P.E.                         Phone: 713-743-4205
Associate Dean, College of Engineering    Fax: 713-743-4214
University of Houston                                     Email: skhator at uh.edu
E421 Engineering Bldg 2                                www.egr.uh.edu/ie
Houston, TX 77204-4008

From: UH IT [mailto:it at uh.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 2:51 PM
To: Khator, Suresh
Subject: UIT Security Alert: Data breach at local university


Dr. Khator,

Today, Houston news agencies are reporting an incident involving a data breach of personal electronic information at a local university. While we are fortunate that this incident did not occur at the University of Houston, this is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of our responsibiltiy to protect the privacy of our employees and students' data and to insure that our processes and data are as secure as possible.

Please take this opportunity to do the following:

 1.  Make sure you do not have any sensitive personal information stored on portable devices such as USB (thumb) drives or on laptops. The most secure place to keep the data is within enterprise applications or on secured servers.
 2.  Run the Identity Finder software on your computers and local shared drives to help locate sensitive personal information. If the information is not essential to your business processes, delete it. If the information must be stored, contact UIT Security for guidance on methods to protect the data. To obtain Identity Finder and support information go to: http://www.uh.edu/identityfinder
 3.  Make sure your computers are up to date on all security patches and virus definitions. Follow safe computer guidelines found at http://www.uh.edu/security.
 4.  Take responsibility for ensuring staff and faculty in your department are also following these practices regarding data protection. UIT Security is available to come meet with your group to discuss these items in more detail.

Safeguarding the personal data of UH faculty, staff and students starts with you! Please let me know how we can best assist you in this regard.

Mary

Mary E. Dickerson, MBA, CISSP, PMP
Interim Executive Director, IT Security
Chief Information Security Officer
University of Houston
phone: 832-842-4679
email: mdickerson at uh.edu

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