At NC State, faculty and staff are responsible for ensuring that university data is properly secured. In order to assist individuals in best determining how to properly store and secure university data, the campus Office of Information Technology (OIT) has made a number of resources available online. Faculty and staff should familiarize themselves with these resources in order to ensure they are adhering to best practices when storing all university data (examples of which include faculty research, student grading information, financial transaction information, departmental meeting notes, etc.).
The first step is to understand the color coding used to categorize data. The university categorizes data as Purple (ultra sensitive), Red (highly sensitive), Yellow (moderately sensitive), Green (not sensitive), and White (not categorized). OIT provides a table that displays various types of data and where they fall in this color coding scheme.
After understanding how data is categorized, it is also important to understand where data of various classifications can be stored. For example, any data other than Purple (ultra sensitive) data can be stored in an employee’s NC State Google Drive account. However, only Green (not sensitive) data can be stored in a non-university provided cloud service account (such as an individual’s personal DropBox account, a personal Google Drive account, etc.). Faculty and staff should familiarize themselves with the locations that are approved for various types of data using OIT’s storage location guidelines and should note that some storage location choices require approval by the local data custodian, which for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences is Dean Jeff Braden.
In addition to the information above, OIT provides additional documentation to the campus community to assist in properly securing data:
- Controls for Securing University Data – Best Practices
- Data Management Procedures Summary and Guidance
- Sensitive Information Identification and Remediation
- Determining Sensitivity Levels for Shared Data
- Frequently Asked Questions – Data Management Procedures
Faculty and staff in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences who have questions about properly securing data should contact CHASS IT for assistance.