Planning Steps for Technical Support Staff - University of Houston
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Planning Steps for Technical Support Staff

The following information is intended for UH tech support providers to help you to respond to and plan for Identity Finder.

  1. You should plan Identity Finder searches with your department chair or division business administrator. This will allow you to plan in advance the type of data you are searching for and the actions to take on the data.
  2. Identify all data locations to be searched. These could include laptops, workstations, locally managed shares, servers, and removable media. UH IT will work with data owners to formulate specific plan to scan centrally managed servers. For example, you do not need to plan on your own to scan H drives or other shares managed by central IT.
  3. Decide on a deployment strategy:
    1. local installations,
    2. a centrally managed installation using the Enterprise Console, or
    3. central scans from a dedicated Windows PC.
    There are advantages and disadvantages to each option, so you should review Identity Finder support documentation to determine ideal scanning and configuration options for your environment.

    If you decide to use the Enterprise Console, email security@uh.edu for specifics about installing the clients and accessing the console, and for help with planning your deployment. There are specific considerations for which version to use and specific steps that should be followed to ensure that the Enterprise Client and Console will work together.

    Note: When conducting remote searches from a dedicated Windows PC, hidden Web data, email messages, and email attachments will not be searched. If Microsoft Outlook is installed on the source Windows computer, Identity Finder will search local .pst and .ost files. Databases such as Oracle and SQL Server cannot be searched with Identity Finder.
  4. Regardless of whichever options you choose, we recommend configuring Identity Finder to mask credit card and Social Security numbers from reports to limit additional exposure of personal information.
  5. Keep records of your scanning activities. In the event a computer is stolen, misplaced, or compromised you will be able to use Identity Finder reports to determine whether sensitive data was potentially exposed.
  6. Identity Finder requires a license file in order to function properly. If you want to create custom installers, email security@uh.edu to request the license file.