Enhance Data Protection with AIP Encryption

In June, ITSC introduced a new data protection tool called Azure Information Protection (AIP). AIP helps to protect university confidential data against accidental leakage.

Traditionally, when colleagues encrypt a document, they must invent a password. Managing these passwords and passing them around are cumbersome, especially when there are large quantities of documents that needs 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 the HKUST staff community using ITSC accounts. This implies that, even if a document is accidentally released to outsiders, the confidential information is protected.

Since AIP was introduced, 13 online training sessions have been conducted with attendance from nearly 1000 colleagues. We observe a high level of adoption with AIP being used by over 500 colleagues daily. If you have missed these trainings, you can access the Zoom video archives and the PowerPoint slides at:
https://gohkust.sharepoint.com/sites/ITSC/Training/SitePages/Training-Materials-for-All-Staff.aspx

To allow colleagues to assess if they can master fundamental AIP skills, ITSC has created an online exercise on the Canvas eLearning platform. It consists of instructions, short videos and a quiz. The exercise should take about 20 minutes to complete and it will be graded. You can contact our Service Desk for assistance if you have problems completing the exercise and you can re-take it as many times as you want. The exercise and details of AIP services can be found here: 
https://itsc.ust.hk/cyber-security/aip