Enhance Data Protection in HKUST with AIP Encryption

Dear Colleagues,

To strengthen our ability to protect university confidential data against accidental leakage,  ITSC is introducing a new data protection tool, called Azure Information Protection (AIP).

Traditionally,  when colleagues encrypt a document, they must invent a password.  Managing these passwords and passing them to others are cumbersome, especially when there are large quantity of documents need to be encrypted.  

With AIP,  documents are protected or accessed based on ITSC accounts and passwords only.

Microsoft Office documents and PDFs will be tagged with different types of labels reflecting different risk levels.  Corresponding levels of protections are applied based on the label.  In particular, documents tagged with the label “Confidential – HKUST Restricted” can only be accessed  by HKUST staff community using ITSC accounts.  This implies that, even if a document is accidentally released to outsiders, confidential information is protected.

Several central departments have already started to pilot test this scheme and will use AIP to protect documents distributed within HKUST.  Initially, these will mainly be high-risk documents (e.g. Excel files with bulk personal data).  The scheme can easily be extended to other types of confidential data.

You are highly encouraged to get prepared for this by configuring your desktop computers (and maybe even mobiles) to be able to access AIP documents.

 To get started

1. Configure your devices so that you can read AIP protected documents.  Refer to https://itsc.ust.hk/cyber-security/aip#get_start.   
2. Ensure you finish step 1 properly by downloading and opening the following Word and Excel files, which are protected with the label “Confidential – HKUST Restricted”

Click here to download the protected Word file

Click here to download the protected Excel file

Detailed information of AIP can be found at https://itsc.ust.hk/cyber-security/aip . 

AIP is available to all staff members now.

For enquiry, please contact ITSC service desk by email to cchelp@ust.hk,  or call 6200.

Regards,
Charles
IT Security Officer