Social Security numbers are a massive part of American life and have been for quite some time as they were introduced more than 80 years ago. Since their issuance, SSNs have become a marquee form of identification, which also makes them one of the most perilous pieces of data to secure.
At the 2020 RSA Cybersecurity Conference last week, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reiterated that the country needs to move away from SSNs for identification. The past few years have seen numerous high-profile data breaches and we’ve reached a point where up to an estimated 80% of Americans’ SSNs have already been exposed.
The push to reduce reliance on SSNs isn’t a new one; the Office of Management and Budget started requiring agencies to minimize the use of the numbers all the way back in 2007. The requirement has had limited specific direction and a lack of concrete milestones though, which means that progress has been slow.
Whether agencies like it or not, change is coming in the more immediate horizon. Starting in 2022, federal agencies will no longer be able to print Social Security numbers on government mail. The government has been looking for a vendor that can create an encrypted token for each piece of mail it sends that will identify not only the recipient, but the mailing as well. As of yet, it appears the search is still ongoing.
While the end goal is to replace Social Security numbers with something new, they’re still incredibly widely used across both the government and the private sector. This is why Extract deploys our automated redaction tool to state and local governments, healthcare organizations, and other private businesses to ensure that Social Security numbers or other pieces of personally identifiable information are being protected. Our software reads documents to find sensitive information, so it doesn’t matter if the data shows
up in a different place on every document.
The difficulty in getting rid of SSNs really lies in their ubiquity. Despite the fact that they’re less secure than they’ve ever been, they’re still used constantly in tasks like applying for a loan, doing your taxes, or even when signing up for utilities.
Progress has obviously been slow, but people often come up with innovative solutions when faced with things like legislation. The 2022 change will serve as a great proof of concept for how a replacement might operate. Private business should be looking closely at this not only because they may be subject to similar legislation in the future, but because they may be able to copy or iterate on the government’s solution.
If you’d like to learn more about our solution to automatically redacting Social Security numbers and other pieces of PII in any kind of document, please reach out today.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.