January 28 marks international Data Privacy Day. Throughout the months of January and February, the higher education community takes the opportunity to discuss privacy issues and share useful resources with students, faculty, and staff.
Data Privacy Day, observed annually on January 28, is part of a global privacy awareness and education effort led by the National Cyber Security Alliance. Since 2012, EDUCAUSE has participated in Data Privacy Day with the higher education community and other Data Privacy Day champions.
Throughout January and February 2019, the EDUCAUSE Cybersecurity Program will focus on sharing tips, tools, and best practices that help our constituents respect individual privacy, safeguard institutional data, and establish trust. Some of our activities this month include:
- A free EDUCAUSE Live! webinar on January 29 with guest speaker Elana Zeide discussing Artificial Intelligence in Education: Legal Considerations and Ethical Questions
- Resources shared via our Data Privacy Day page
- Tips shared on Twitter using the hashtag #PrivacyAware
- Customizable content and suggested resources on privacy from the 2019 Campus Security Awareness Campaign, including content specific to privacy: January 2019: Data Privacy in an Era of Compliance
If you are a campus privacy professional responsible for developing privacy awareness activities or events, we offer the ideas below. These suggestions are meant to be appropriate for all higher education community members—students, faculty, and staff—during Data Privacy Day, Data Privacy Month, and throughout the year as part of a privacy awareness program.
- Attend a Data Privacy Day event (live or virtually). Examples include the University of Michigan's Privacy @ Michigan event and Rice University's Symposium on Data Privacy, both offered on January 28.
- Host a privacy-themed movie screening followed by a Q&A session focusing on the privacy and surveillance issues raised in the film. Some community favorites include:
- Share these short videos (all under 30 minutes) and host a discussion:
- Silent Circle: A two-minute brief on smartphone risks from the #PrivacyProject
- A Danish video highlighting how we unwittingly relinquish private information [1:57]
- Online Privacy: How Did We Get Here?: PBS Off Book episode [8:10]
- Glenn Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters: TED talk [20:38]
- The Power of Privacy: A longer, compelling documentary, also from the #PrivacyProject [28:45]
- Invite local privacy experts to speak about current privacy concerns like "the surveillance state," the impact of smart devices and the Internet of Things on our personal lives, the use of drones, and the social and legal evolution of privacy.
- Host a series of brown-bag discussions (e.g., lunch-and-learns, brainy-breakfasts) in various locations on campus to discuss privacy issues. Use these occasions to share information about institutional privacy practices or how to use social media platforms in a privacy-aware manner.
- Use social media to share your thoughts on higher education privacy issues. Be sure to tag your posts with #PrivacyAware so others can share them too.
We hope these ideas will help get you started! Please don't forget to share your plans and lessons learned with our EDUCAUSE Privacy Community Group.
Finally, EDUCAUSE is a proud Data Privacy Day Champion. We encourage colleges and universities to join us by signing up as a champion online—more than 80 joined us as champions in 2018. There is no financial requirement, and it signals that your institution is committed to raising privacy awareness.
Valerie M. Vogel is Interim Director of the Cybersecurity Program at EDUCAUSE.
© 2019 Valerie M. Vogel. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.