This month, we’re talking about the importance of data privacy and steps you can take to better protect your data online. Data Privacy Day is Sunday, January 28 and was created to start a conversation about the importance of data privacy and provide resources to help you protect your data.
Here at GW, the Division of IT provides students, faculty and staff access to GW Google Drive and GW Box to store and collaborate on files. These document management solutions provide plenty of storage space and have features that allow users to easily share documents with others.
In order to protect your data and GW’s data when using these services, follow these security best practices:
- Evaluate the business need
- If you don’t need to store or maintain a document, don’t
- If the document contains regulated data, use GW Box, not GW Google Drive
- If the document contains restricted or public data, you can use GW Box or GW Google Drive
- Share with care
- Be mindful of what you are sharing and with whom you are sharing it. It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to sharing files so be mindful of typos and these options when you share:
- Share with “People with the Link” - Anyone with the link to this file is able to access the document (this sharing means public)
- Share with “People in your company” - Anyone with the link at GW will be able to access the document
- Share with “People in this folder” - Anyone who has access to the folder will be able to access the document
- Be mindful of what you are sharing and with whom you are sharing it. It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to sharing files so be mindful of typos and these options when you share:
- Don’t store credit card numbers
- Limit use and storage of Social Security Numbers (SSN)
- Most of the functionality and use of SSN has been replaced by the GWID
- If you do work with SSNs, be mindful of what you are storing on your local machine and in GW Box and GW Google Drive
- Only store Social Security Numbers in GW Box and only if there is a valid business need
You can learn more about document management solutions at GW by visiting https://it.gwu.edu/document-management-services.
The Division of IT is holding a Data Privacy Event on January 30, 2018 in the lower level of District House. Join us to learn more about data privacy resources.
If you’re interested in helping to shape a data privacy program at GW, please take our short survey: https://it.gwu.edu/data-privacy-survey. Respondents will be entered to win one of two books about data privacy.
