Due to the risk of data loss/theft, and the costs associated with a computer security incident, SC Johnson College has established a goal of completely eliminating the storage of reportable university data from its PCs, laptops and servers. Reportable data includes: Social Security, credit card, driver’s license and bank account numbers of our students, alumni, faculty, staff, customers and affiliates.
Spirion
Spirion (formally Identity Finder) is a software tool intended to help you locate and remove confidential data within your electronic files. SC Johnson IT Operations will install Spirion on your computer. We have preconfigured to scan all local hard drives and all attached drives (USB flash drives, external hard drives, etc.).
We will initiate a Spirion Scan. The scan will run in the background while you work. Once the scan has completed you will have a window with possible matches.
If Spirion finds what it considers confidential data on your computer, you can choose to:
- Delete the file (shred or send to trash)
- Remove the confidential data (manually or using the Redact feature) or
- Ignore the match or file location on subsequent scans (use this for identifying false positives). If you believe you have a special situation where these options do not meet your business needs, you will need to meet with SC Johnson Help Desk to discuss alternatives. Some results may contain system files that you will not be able to shred. Please set these files to ignore.
Instructions
When the scan is finished, any matches found will be displayed in the results window.
Note: Clicking on individual results will generate a preview of the file highlighting the information it flagged as confidential
- You must review the match data for each location to determine the best action to take.
You have 3 choices:
a. Shred - Clicking the “Shred” icon will permanently destroy the selected files. Choose this action if you are certain that you do not need the file. Shred is the most desirable action for documents that truly contain confidential data.
b. Redact - Clicking the “redact” icon will leave the file intact and will replace the sensitive text with X’s. For example an email containing the phrase “Password: your password” would be left completely intact, except that sentence would be rewritten as “Password: XXXXXXX”. This will allow you to keep any information stored in your files, while destroying the potential identity risks.
c. Ignore - Clicking “Ignore” will allow you to ignore this file by choosing “This Item Location". 
Known issues:
What if Spirion is unable to Shred a file...
- Right click the file and click "Open file location"
- Windows Explorer will open the folder containing the file and the file will be selected
- Right click the selected file
- While holding down the Shift key on your keyboard, click Delete in the list
- Click Yes to "Are you sure you want to permanently delete this file?"
- Close Windows Explorer
- Continue steps 1 through 6 for each file that Spirion can't Shred
- Close Spirion when you are finished remediating all files
If you have questions regarding Spirion please contact the helpdesk – itrequests@business.cornell.edu
Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Helpdesk – itrequests@business.cornell.edu – 607-255-6300