Spirion: Overview and Usage Guide

Overview

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire has invested resources into a site license of Spirion, formerly Identity Finder, for usage on UW-Eau Claire owned computers. Similar to the antivirus software installed on UW-Eau Claire computers that scans for viruses and malware, Spirion software can scan your computer or device for Personally Identifiable Information or PII.  Some examples of PII include:

• Social Security Numbers
• Credit Card Numbers
• Financial Account Numbers
• Birth Dates
• Passwords
• Phone Numbers
• Health Information

If Spirion finds this information, the software generates a report showing it found this information and at which location on the device the information is located. Note that Spirion by default will only scan the main hard drive of your computer that the operating system runs from.For more information regarding Spirion, please visit their website at https://www.spirion.com/.

LTS Communication Process

If a department or unit at UW-Eau Claire would like to utilize Spirion to scan computers and storage devices for PII, Learning & Technology Services can help setup and configure the scans.  If PII is found during the scanning process, the follow communication process will be followed:  

1. LTS staff contacts the faculty, staff or student explaining that data was found and sharing that information with them.
2. LTS staff consults with the faculty, staff, or student and will suggest to either delete the information or consult on how to best secure and store the information moving forward. 
3. If the information is needed, LTS staff will suggest the appropriate storage location and coordinate with the faculty, staff, or student to setup the proper permissions to that storage, preventing unwanted access. 
4. LTS staff will help the faculty, staff or student move the information to that secured storage. 

Spirion scan on a Windows Computer

1. Go to the search bar on your computer and type “Spirion”. Click on Spirion.
   • NOTE: If Spirion does not appear after the search, please email helpdesk@uwec.edu.
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2. Next click “Skip”
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3. A “Guest Profile” pop up will appear. Click “OK”
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4. Next click “Open Advanced Interface”
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5. Go to the “Locations” tab and then click on “Files”. Click on “Enable File Search” from the drop-down menu. It will be highlighted blue after it has been toggled on.
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6. Go to the “Data Types” tab and then select:
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     • Social Security 
     • Credit Card
     • Password Entry
     • Bank Account
7. Go to the “Main” tab and click on “Start”
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8. Next a search will begin as shown below. You can click the “- “symbol on the top right corner and continue to use the computer while the scan runs in the background.
   • NOTE: Spirion will use be using a lot of the computers resources so you may your computer slow down while it is scanning
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9. After the scan is complete, click on “Advanced”.
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10. You should now have a list of the files found by Spirion that it believes contain sensitive information.
    • 

Spirion scan on a Mac computer

1. Go to Spotlight on your computer (Magnifying glass on the top right) and type “Spirion”. Click on Spirion
   • NOTE: If Spirion does not appear after the search, please email helpdesk@uwec.edu.
   • 
2. Next click “Cancel”
   • 
3. A “Guest Profile” pop-up will appear. Click OK.
   • 
4. Make sure that Computer is selected as the file location, then select:
   • Social Security
   • Credit Card
   • Password Entry
   • Bank Account
5. Once those options are selected, click on Search.
   • 
6. This initial scan will come up empty, so just wait until it says, Search completed and then click OK.
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7. Go to the Locations tab, which is located on the top menu, and then click Files and then click Enable File Search. You will know that you have turned on Enable File Search once it has a check mark next to it.
8. Then, click Start.
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9. Next, a search will begin as shown below. You can click the yellow “- “symbol on the top left corner and continue to work while the scan runs in the background.
   
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10. After the scan is completed, click OK.
    
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11. You should now see a list of files that contain sensitive information.
    
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What to do with the data Spirion found

Spirion has just finished its scan and found files containing sensitive data. Your next steps will depend on which type of data Spirion found. We have two categories for found data. The first category is PCI Data, which is credit card numbers, and the second category is Sensitive Data or PII (Personally Identifiable Information), which is information such as Social Security numbers. Please proceed according to which category your data belongs to.

NOTE: Spirion may sometimes give out false positives. You can verify if a file does contain sensitive information by double clicking on the file which would open up the file. You can also click on the file, and it will open a preview pane on the right side of the Spirion window which would show you the text of the file and highlight in yellow where it found the sensitive information.

PCI Data - Credit Card Numbers

Option 1: The easiest option is to delete the file and empty your Trash (Mac) or Recycling Bin (Windows).

Option 2: This option is more thorough if you want to take extra precautions.

• While on the “Main” tab, you can shred the file in the Spirion window by selecting the line with the file you wish to shred (The selected file will be highlighted in blue) and selecting the “Shred” option in the row at the top.
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• If you want to keep the file, but remove the credit card number, you can:
  • Open the file in an editor, e.g., filename.txt
  • Delete the credit card number
  • Save the file with the temporary name, e.g., filename.txt to filename_tmp.txt
  • Shred the original (filename.txt)

Doing it this way allows the shred to actually do its job and overwrite the disk where the credit card number is stored.

PII Sensitive Data

If Spirion finds any sensitive data on your computer, we strongly recommend that you delete the file and empty your Recycling Bin.

If you still need the data, please consider moving it to a safe location. Our recommendation is OneDrive.

Related Information

For more information on safe locations to save your data, visit Network: Network Drives Overview.

For more information on data security, visit Security: Data Safety and Protection.

In-program Documentation

If at any time you need additional information on Spirion, you can contact the Help Desk in Vicki Lord Larson Hall. You can also find information by accessing Spirion's in-program documentation. There are several ways of doing this: On Windows 7/8, you can find the in-program documentation from the Start menu by navigating to the Spirion folder (Start>>Programs>>Utilities>>Spirion) and clicking Spirion Help.

At the login and set up screens, click Help.

If you are in Spirion, click the question mark icon in the top right corner to bring up the Help document or click the Configuration tab and click User Guide.