Welcome to Data Privacy Month

Privacy — it is an ideal cherished and ignored by many. If you don’t have privacy, you may desperately want it. If you have it, you most likely take it for granted. And, you may be willing to trade your privacy for other items of value to you.

January 28 marks Data Privacy Day in the United States and Data Protection Day across much of the rest of the world. The purpose of this day is to raise awareness of the privacy issues in our connected, digital, always-on information age. Since 2012, EDUCAUSE has celebrated Data Privacy Day with our partners at the National Cyber Security Alliance and with other Data Privacy Day champions. In the higher education environment, this means sharing tips, tools, and techniques that help our constituents respect individual privacy, safeguard institutional data, and establish trust.

A day is not nearly enough time to focus on the privacy topics most important to higher education, so through these early months of 2017, the EDUCAUSE Cybersecurity Initiative will pay particular attention to higher education privacy issues. Upcoming events of interest for this special higher education “Data Privacy Month” include:

• An EDUCAUSE Live! webinar on January 26 to kick off our privacy awareness activities
• Weekly Security Matters blog posts authored by higher education privacy experts discussing hot topics in privacy
• Resources shared via our Data Privacy Day webpage and our @HEISCouncil Twitter account using the hashtag #PrivacyAware
• January privacy resources from the HEISC Awareness and Training Working Group 2017 Campus Security Awareness Campaign

As we mark Data Privacy Day, consider signing up to be a Data Privacy Day Champion. There is no financial requirement, and it signals that your institution is committed to raising privacy awareness. In 2016, 53 higher education institutions where champions — let’s see if we can surpass that number in 2017.

Joanna Lyn Grama is director of cybersecurity and IT GRC programs for EDUCAUSE.