Working with Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the Student Record

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is any information that can be used to infer the identity of the individual to whom the information applies, by either direct or indirect means. In PowerFAIDS, this typically includes student information, such as a student's social security number or their birth date.

When working with student records in PowerFAIDS, this type of PII is masked for all users by default, which hides the PII from view until needed.

When needed, you can unmask PII temporarily from the More Actions menu in the module navigation bar.

Navigation bar with More Actions menu expanded

The option shown in the menu will update based on whether PII is currently masked or unmasked. It is typically best practice to always re-enable masking when you are done viewing the necessary PII.

Access to unmask PII is based on permissions set in a user's security group in the System Administration module, under the System-Wide tab. If a user does not have permission to unmask PII, then PII will always be masked.

Note: Searching for student records using PII (such as a social security number) will still return the correct results even if the corresponding data is masked in the record.