Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Texas A&M University for Internet Privacy & Security

Universities and colleges around the world house personal information for their students, faculty, and staff. It is their duty to protect their information from those wanting to harm them with intention of fruadulant activity. Texas A&M is a division one school in southern Texas who is taking a stand for internet privacy and security.

Texas A&M provides a privacy and security statement available to all 24/7. It lists its uses of their different websites available for their student and faculty use. The statement says: Texas A&M websites do not make use of 'cookies' or files containing unique personal information. They do collect and store technical information about students visits to their server logs. This helps technicians to evaluate popularity of specific features on their sites; which is used for statistics, technical design, and system information issues. Texas A&M does allow general information to be collected by Google Anayltics. They also give way for students to release their own personal information to departments to further answer questions, etc. Texas A&M can also release information when authorized, to help law enforcement investigations, legal proceedings, and internal investigations at the university when rule and regulation violations are pursued by a student.

In order to instore faithfulness in this system, the university lists each server log and Google Analytic used.
This information is given with regard to the Texas Public Information Act; which states that students and parents have the right to be informed about their personal/general information being collected on certain university websites and they have the ability to see their information collected by requesting the information through the TAMU Public Information Officer or TAMU Office of Open Records.

To instill even more trust in the privacy system and security measures, the university includes the statement of them undergoing an annual security risk assessment through the ISAAC, also known as Information Awareness Assessment and Compliance system.

I'm proud to be part of Texas A&M University and their fight against internet hackers and fraud. I respect the institution for their availability to see my information if needed and their security measures to ensure the safety of my personal information. I hope other universities have instilled the same security measures or will do so in the near future.

-C

More information about the Texas A&M University Privacy & Security Statement, courtesy of Texas A&M Office of the Registrar.
Links are available to other sources used by the university on this web page.

1 comment:

  1. Honestly, I did not know about this. This is very beneficial information for me. Of course, if there is a crime or a serious accident happened, I would like to help and to respect to see my information on the storage. However, from now, I have to be careful when I save a file on the computer. If some seriously personal files that I saved are shown by someone, I am not happy of this.

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