Williams College Google Drive Use Policy

Data owned, used, created or maintained by the College is classified into the following four categories

(see the Williams College Confidentiality Policy for more detail)

PROTECTED and NOT Approved for Williams College Cloud Storage (ex. Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)

State and Federal laws and some contracts impose stringent requirements for protecting certain types of information.  Some of the key legal requirements we must abide by are listed below. Other laws may apply as well, including those of states other than Massachusetts if victims of a data breach reside elsewhere

Name of living persons in combination with SSN or financial account number or driver’s license number (Massachusetts Identity Theft Law )
Non-public financial information, including student loan information (Gramm-Leach Bliley Act )
Personal health information (​HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability & Privacy Act )
Credit and debit card information (​​PCI DSS: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards)

Need to Know (permitted on Google Drive)

Includes employee information such as salary data, evaluation data, biographical information etc., faculty research projects related information, student financial data, academic information etc., alumni information such as gift and pledge data, home addresses, phone numbers etc., and nonpublic financial information of the College.

Internal (permitted on Google Drive)

Internal data is information that is potentially sensitive and is not intended to be shared with the public.  Internal data generally should not be disclosed outside of the College without the permission of the person or group that created the data.  It is the responsibility of the data owner to designate information as Internal where appropriate.  If you have questions about whether information is Internal or how to treat Internal data, you should talk to your department head.

Public (permitted on Google Drive)

Public data is information that may be disclosed to any person regardless of their affiliation with the College.  The Public classification is not limited to data that is of public interest or intended to be distributed to the public; the classification applies to data that do not require any level of protection from disclosure.