Issue date: 1/31/05 Section: Campus

Media Credit: Alex Petkofski Student grades at ISU are currently posted by social security numbers on a bulletin board in Fairchild Hall.

Social security numbers will no longer be used as a method of identifying students.

According to Director of University Data Administrations Bill Cummins, after June 1, 2005, ISU will have a new identification system for both faculty members and the student body.

Cummins said this new system would convert social security numbers into unique identifiers.

A major component of the identification conversion is to eliminate grade posting in public areas, Cummins said.

He said the new university identification numbers would also be used on scantrons where social security numbers would have been written.

Cummins said social security numbers were used as a direct identifier to help link records together.

The estimated cost of the new identification system, he said, would include $40,000 to provide new Redbird cards and $110,000 to change documents which require social security numbers. Money will also go toward program changes.

"It's been a longtime coming and I think that it will be quite beneficial," Cummins said.

Director of Computer Infrastructure Support Services, Carla Birckelbaw, said universities use social security numbers in order to do business with the government. According to her, the use of social security numbers may never be reduced.

"[It is] a matter of reducing the exposure of it," Birckelbaw said.

Birckelbaw said the prevention of identity theft is the task of individual people. According to her, the university has created methods of preventing identification theft on campus.

ISU has created password strengths, which allow a certain number of tries for a student to access an account using a password. If the password is incorrect, the student is booted out of the system. This method of password protection denies computer hackers enough time to break security codes and access someone's account.

According to Birckelbaw, students and faculty should be careful when creating passwords.

They should not use passwords that may be easily guessed.

ISU offers suggestions and tips for how to choose passwords when students and faculty log on to change them.

The greatest fear among students and professors is that their information will be intercepted via the Internet.

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