In an effort to better protect electronic personal information at the university, President Philip Austin today announced the beginning of a new computer and data security initiative at UConn.<\/p>\n
In his letter to the community, Austin wrote that the university will \u201cembark upon a comprehensive and deliberate effort to address computer security concerns\u201d and that the initiative will focus on \u201cidentifying our vulnerabilities and ameliorating them, both with respect to previously acquired and stored data and data that will be acquired and stored in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
In August a laptop computer was stolen from the West Hartford regional campus that contained the names and social security numbers of people who had applied to the campus. The university informed anyone whose personal information was on the computer and offered credit monitoring coverage for two years at the university\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecurity issues at the university have increased over the last several years due to significant growth in data creation and storage, off-campus computing and the use of personal electronic devices,\u201d wrote Austin. \u201cAs a result, the university has become vulnerable to the ever-increasing risks of data loss and identity theft.\u201d<\/p>\n
UConn\u2019s Chief Information Officer, David Gilbertson, and Jason Pufahl, director of information security at the university, will lead the effort over the coming months.<\/p>\n
At a minimum, Austin wrote, the plan they develop will include:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Identifying all University employees who legitimately need access to sensitive personal information, in particular Social Security numbers, and eliminating use of, or access to, these numbers by all other University employees with a strict process for periodic reviews;<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Educating and training all University personnel in safe practices for data storage and management;<\/p>\n
3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Employing appropriate technological tools and procedures to protect sensitive data on all University websites, servers, computers, laptops, and other electronic devices used by UConn employees, and eliminating or protecting such data as warranted; and<\/p>\n
4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Developing an on-going security plan for ensuring these appropriate and needed protections are in place moving forward.<\/p>\n
Though Austin noted that the effort would involve expense and be time-consuming \u2013 including the amount of time faculty and staff may need to spend on things like updated training \u2013 \u201cas an institution, we cannot shy away from this task.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Austin\u00a0announces a computer and data security initiative to begin immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-23197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-23 01:06:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23197"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45179,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197\/revisions\/45179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23197"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=23197"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}