Identity Finder Central Console

TTS is rolling out and offering an Identity Finder console version that provides a view of scan results for your entire department, school, or division. The new system will allow Information Stewards to scan many computers and communicate results to their colleagues. It is not a required change and TTS will continue to support the individual version that is currently in use. 

Manually running Identity Finder on workstations and laptops can be tedious. The new, centralized version enables administrators (Information Stewards or their delegates) to scan multiple computers automatically. The scan can run in the background with negligible performance impact on the user’s computer. This change will make Identity Finder a managed service rather than an individualized effort, reducing risk and making compliance easier and more cost effective.

The centralized console will not be able to view, edit, or delete sensitive data. Instead, the console will only show the location of the sensitive file on the end user's machine. The Information Stewards or their delegates must work with the individual end-users to clean up any files.

Overview

Information Security recommends the following workflow to address users with the largest caches of sensitive information first. Detailed instructions on using the console follow but at a high level:

1. Identify users with the highest number of reported sensitive data matches. There are often false positives in Identity Finder, so these matches may not always be accurate. 

2. Review the file locations of search results for the top users you identified. Information Security recommends reviewing the top 5-10 users or reviewing all users with a certain number of matches or above. Use your judgement on whether these files contain University data or personal records. In either case, you should contact the user to inform them that they have this data; however, University data is of a higher priority from an institutional perspective. If you are sure that a file does not contain sensitive data, you can exclude it from the results or add it to the "Global Ignore List."

3. If any potential sensitive data still remains, contact the user or users' support provider to help them locate and evaluate the contents of the files. In the majority of cases, the information is not necessary for the user's job or business and they are eager to remove sensitive information. If they need the information or would like to retain it for personal reasons, they will inform you and you can put those individual results on the "Exclude" or "Global Ignore List."

By reviewing the top 5 to 10 highest users every quarter, you will quickly eliminate the majority of unnecessary sensitive data in your division. The highest user typically holds over 50% of the sensitive data, so by removing or white listing those files, you can reduce your risk by half almost immediately. The 10 top users should change each quarter as you work with the members of your division to remove sensitive data.