Seward Incorporated, a web-based training and education design and development firm, originally designed the online training entitled Public Jobs: Private Data for the University of Minnesota to help faculty and staff secure private data in their public jobs.

The unique requirements of public institutions with widely varying employee types (student, faculty, part- and full-time administrative) required development of training that did not exist commercially. Learners identify and incorporate best practices for secure data management.

Before and after training assessments of university employees show an increase of 10 to 20 percentage points in trainee confidence in dealing with data security issues.

In addition to the University of Minnesota, the training has now been rolled out to the 32 state colleges and universities in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.