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E-mail audit to verify MUSC accounts, clear inactives by George Spain CCIT Technical Publisher You will soon be getting an e-mail asking you to verify your account by associating your name and Social Security number with your e-mail address. You will be able to do this on a secure web server. C. Frank Starmer, associate provost for information technology, requested this project, called the Global Address Book Audit (GAB audit), be conducted by the Center for Computing and Information Technology (CCIT.  Starmer said the audit has several purposes, among them are cleanup of the more than 22,000 e-mail accounts listed in GAB and tighter control of access to campus resources from off campus. The audit will begin with users receiving an e-mail with instructions to follow an Internet link to verify their account. All e-mail users will get several weeks to follow the links and verify their accounts with their Social Security numbers. Following two additional notices, those who still haven't complied could have their account discontinued, Starmer said. The audit affects all e-mail users regardless of their e-mail client (GroupWise, Mulberry, Netscape, etc.).  The most important function of the audit is to clear out inactive accounts. The Global Address Book lists approximately 22,900 names; of those, 17,800 are listed as “active.” Administrators estimate there are about 12,000 “MUSC people” who need an account (faculty, employees, students, affiliates, etc.). Quick math shows that there are at least 5,000 accounts and as many as 10,000, that should be removed from the e-mail system.   “As we move to wireless access and, at the same time, face federal regulations that limit access to student and patient information, it's essential that we eliminate unused, invalid or unsponsored accounts,” said Starmer. Because you may have concerns about giving your Social Security number on-line, CCIT has taken the following precautions: The audit will take place on a secure (encrypted) server. Once your Social Security number has been linked to your account, it will vanish from GAB and be replaced by an internal number that will be meaningless to anyone who attempts to hack into the GAB system. In addition, all future printed e-mail request forms—such as the MUSC Network Account (MNA)—will require a Social Security number.  For the future, MUSC is building a directory that will link together people, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, labs, etc. Using a Social Security number to create a key allows coordination with personnel and student records to help avoid duplication of database entries. Social Security numbers will not be publically accessible, but will be used only internally to link directory information.