How to get started with PII Shield

School Passport allows you to mark users' attributes as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). When an attribute is marked as masked, it will be replaced with a mask (e.g. ***) and will not be visible in Data Browsing.

When the application has enabled PII Shield, districts can choose attributes which attributes to mask from the provided list. This allows districts to customize the protection of sensitive data based on their specific requirements and preferences.

Data masking (PII) rules

The PII Shield feature is available for user entities only, such as student, teacher, contact, and admin.

Attribute	Description	Example
Last Name	Exposes the first letter only, replacing the rest of the string with `***`.	For `Laura Turner`, returns `T***`
First Name	Exposes the first letter only, replacing the rest of the string with `***`.	For `Richard`, returns `R***`
Email Address	The username of an email is replaced with a set of random letters, and the domain is replaced with `gg4l.com`. Upon activation of the application by a district (prior to data import), returns an empty string.	For `[email protected]@com`, returns `[email protected]`

Using PII Shield

Perform the following steps to create PII rules and mask data.

Step 1: Create PII rule

The PII Shield rules define which data can be removed and/or masked in the data stream to enhance its security.

Go to the Application Settings > Data Requirements.
Choose an entity.
Select the Data Masking checkboxes next to the respective fields.
Click Save & Publish.

Once rules have been created, districts can choose individual rules when making data sharing requests from the ones that you have created.

Step 2: Apply PII rules

To apply defined data to district`s data, you need to send a request for changes to the district with the enabled PII Shield feature.

Go to the district dashboard > Overview .
Click Request Changes.
On the Data Access Consent:
- (Recommended) To apply all PII rules at once, turn on the PII Shield toggle.
- To apply separate PII rules, select them in the Attributes section.
Click Request Changes.

Once the district approves your request, data will be masked in accordance with PII rules.