What is PII?

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) include, but not limited to name, Social Security Number (SSN), and date of birth (DOB).  In addition, any information that can be joined or added to another piece of information to establish an individual’s identity could be described as PII. Such information could be an individual’s address, mother’s maiden name, bank account number, PIN number, credit card number and related information (PCI) as well as health information (PHI).

PII must be protected to avoid all the heartache and the ripple effect that a breach of PII could cause individuals as well as organizations.  One breach is one too many; therefore, awareness, education, and training are key components of securing information both on an individual level and organizational level.  Most times, individuals and employees are their own enemies because of lack of knowledge which is, as a matter of fact, very prevalent. 

Many people have no clue on what constitutes a PII, let alone how to protect their information.  Several times, people discard the sensitive information into trash cans without a care in the world, not knowing that such information if fallen into the hands of an adversary could cause them more trouble than some minutes of care, such as taking time to properly shred or delete forever any sensitive information they intend to discard, rather than just tossing it into a physical or electronic trash bin.