Social Security Number field (Feature Request)

Tamara Photiadis

Hello Community,


This is my first time posting, so forgive me if I'm doing this in the wrong place, and please guide me along; I can move this if needed.


We are a small higher ed school. Our licensing body requires that we collect the last 4 digits of student social security numbers. I have reviewed the security features that Blackbaud has on the Social Security Number field, and they are really appealing. We would love to take advantage of these features. However, our consultant is saying that the only way we can do this is to instruct the students to enter their number with a specific format: 000-00-xxxx. I think this will be too confusing for applicants to be practical.


Is it possible to create a new version of the social security field that requires only 4 digits? The reason I believe this is superior to simply creating a custom field is because it would benefit from the security features. It is not very hard for a hacker to figure out a person's full social security number when they have the last 4 digits. We would like to protect our student's "last 4 digits" data with as much security as possible.


Thank you so much for considering our request.


Tamara

Timothy Hildreth

Hi Tamara,


Using the dedicated fields for sensitive data like Socials is definitely the right way to go to protect student data. Your request sounds like a perfect idea to add to our Ideas portal to see if other schools share this same need. Ideas that support many schools are more likely to make their way onto the product development roadmap. To add an Idea, you'll need to create a profile on the Ideas page (just click the tab above to get started).


Best,

Tim

Tamara Photiadis

Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction!