Locating Our Confidential Data

In an effort to try and detect confidential data on university-owned systems and reduce the risk that UMBC will be the source of a data breach, UMBC has worked with the university system to purchase a program called Identity Finder.  Identity Finder is a program that runs in the background on computers and looks for information like SSNs and credit card numbers.  The program will make a list of the files that contain this information, but will not modify or delete the files.  Once we receive the lists of files that possibly contain confidential data, we will work with each machine's owner to determine how to best manage data.

We have been running the program, for almost a year, in the departments that process and store SSNs and credit cards as a standard part of their business.  Starting this week, we are pushing the program out to all centrally managed UMBC machines.  The software will be installed automatically on each system, through Active Directory,  and members of the UMBC community should not need to do anything.  If anyone sees an impact from the installation of Identity Finder or has any questions, they should contact the DoIT Technology Support Center at x53838.  

Mark Cather

DoIT / UMBC