Working with University Data from Off-Campus Locations

The option of working from locations off-campus during the Intersession Energy Savings Initiative increases the importance of safeguarding sensitive and regulated institutional data. The University is obligated by law to protect certain categories of information such as educational, health, and financial records, social security numbers and names, as well as sensitive information like personnel files. In fact, exposure of this information on the University's part can subject the campus to significant legal and financial penalties.

For these reasons, the following measures should be taken when working with institutional data from off-campus locations:

• Off-campus systems should be patched, run antivirus, and require strong passwords.

• Access to campus resources should be over the Virtual Private Network (VPN). This protects University data as it travels over the public Internet, and allows employees to work with files stored on protected shared drives.

• Under no circumstances should copies of University data be saved on off-campus computers.