June 30, 2008

Protect WSU data from identity theft

Last week the news media mentioned findings that personal information such as Social Security numbers had been found on state computers purchased at a state surplus sale. After this news, the state issued a memo and a report to all state agencies to remove data on disposed machines.

In March 2005, WSU created and implemented such a policy (19.10/Retirement of Computing and Information Technology Resources/http://webs.wichita.edu/inaudit/ch19_10.htm) that all systems going to the Physical Plant warehouse had to be free of all data, applications and operating systems. If a system is being warehoused, the hard drive has to be erased or destroyed by either departmental technicians or technicians from University Computing. The Disposal of Property form now has space for the sign-off that the computer no longer contains retrievable data or programs.