Peace Corps Volunteer Application- PIA

PRIVACY IMPACT ASSESSMENT (PIA)
PRIVACY IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Is this a new or substantially revised electronic information system? If revised,
describe revisions.
This system, the Peace Corps Volunteer Application, is utilizing a
new electronic information system.
If any question does not apply, state not applicable (N/A) for each question and
explain why.
I.

Describe the information to be collected (e.g., nature and source). Be sure to
include any information in an identifiable form, e.g., name, address, social
security number or other identifying number or code, telephone number,
email address, etc).
The information is collected from the general public and includes:
Name, address, date of birth, telephone numbers, social security
number, email address, race, sex, national origin, ethnicity,
education, financial obligations, legal history, drug and alcohol
information, volunteer history, employment experience, essays,
language skills, assignment and regional preferences, and other
information relevant to the volunteer positions that Peace Corps
provides overseas.
This information, only when collected from the public in a hard
copy of the application, will be scanned into the system by a Peace
Corps staff person. Please note that this won‟t be necessary for
the 99% of current applicants who complete Peace Corps
Volunteer applications online.

II.

Why is the information being collected (e.g., to determine eligibility)?
This information is being collected in order to assess the eligibility of
Peace Corps applicants, as well as to assess an applicant‟s technical
competitiveness in relation to that of other applicants. This
information is also being collected to assess the suitability of Peace
Corps applicants, including their Cultural Sensitivity, Emotional
Maturity, Motivation and Commitment, and Productive Competence
(technical skills).
In addition…
Date of Birth, Place of Birth or Naturalization Number, and
Intelligence Activities are necessary to determine eligibility for the
Peace Corps.

Email addresses are necessary to begin, save and submit the
Peace Corps Volunteer application.
Email addresses, Names, Social Security Numbers and Dates of
Birth are used to verify the identities of individual applicants.
City, State and ZIP code are used to track geographic locations of
applicants for the purpose of analyzing application trends.
Marital Status, Financial Obligations, Dependents and Military
History are necessary to determine if there are legal or financial
reasons why an applicant can not leave the United States for a 27month Peace Corps assignment.
References are collected in order to assess the suitability of Peace
Corps applicants.

III.

How will the information be used (e.g., to verify existing data)?
See responses above.
Additionally, Reason for Applying will be used to analyze what
attracted applicants to the Peace Corps.

IV.

Will you share the information with others (e.g., another agency for a
programmatic purpose)? If yes, list the entities.
This information is not shared outside the agency.

V.

Describe what opportunities individuals have been given to decline to provide
information or to consent to particular use of the information (e.g., whether
individual may withhold permission for a particular use).
A Privacy Act Notice will be provided which will indicate that
providing the information is voluntary. However, failure to
provide the information will preclude the successful submission of
the Peace Corps Volunteer application.

VI.

How will the information be secured (e.g., administrative and technological
controls)?
1. Kenexa's architecture is composed of redundant firewalls with inline
intrusion prevention modules (Cisco), switches (Cisco), load
balancers (F5), web servers (HP/MS Windows Server 2003),
application servers (HP/MS Windows Server 2003), search servers
and database servers (HP/Windows 2003/SQL 2000). Kenexa
maintains 2 redundant firewalls with inline intrusion prevention
modules at the Internet perimeter and 2 redundant firewalls on the
point-to-point T3 line between the corporate and hosted
infrastructures. Firewall security policy limits in-bound perimeter
access to essential Internet services necessary to access Kenexa
application functionality and internal access on a host-by-host basis
from Corporate to remotely manage the systems. All other types of
traffic are strictly denied. Kenexa's IPS events are monitored and

correlated 24/7 through Cisco Managed Services notifying Kenexa of
any suspected attack.
Each server is “hardened” during a standard build process removing
unnecessary services and patching before deployment. Patches are
applied in approximately 45–60 days of release to remain in
compliance with Kenexa‟s security certification requirements. Patches
are immediately deployed to Kenexa‟s development environments as
they are released by vendors. Once initial testing has been completed
the patches are deployed to Kenexa‟s QA environments for full
testing. Once approved patches are deployed to Kenexa‟s Staging,
BETA, and Production environments. Web and Application servers can
be pulled from their pools and patched without any customer impact.
Database servers are patched during Kenexa‟s monthly maintenance
(approximately 45–60 days after the patch was released). In the
event of a critical patch where exploit code exists and could
potentially impact Kenexa‟s environment these patches would be
fast-tracked and emergency downtime would be scheduled for
database patching.
Through Kenexa‟s separation of duties we ensure the principle of
least privilege, by only granting the permissions required for an
individual to perform his/her job function. Responsibilities are
divided up between Kenexa‟s DBA, SCM, Hosting, Security, Corporate
IS, Internal Applications, QA, and distinct engineering groups based
on product (KRB, Gateways, and Workbench).
Each environment is segregated from the other and strictly controlled
to ensure its integrity. Kenexa‟s environment consists of multiple
development environments, multiple QA environments, BETA,
Staging, and Production. Any change to the product follows a strict
change control process where changes are first created in Kenexa‟s
development environment. Once approved, they are moved to
Kenexa‟s QA environments for thorough testing. Once the build has
been officially approved by Kenexa‟s QA department it is scheduled
and moved to Kenexa‟s Staging and Production environments.
All production servers have host-based IPS installed and real-time
anti-virus with daily pattern file updates. Each physical tier has
additional ACLs between them only permitting essential traffic for
application functionality and support. The KRB web tier cannot talk
directly to the database tier and the database tier does not have
Internet access. Access to Kenexa‟s database servers is controlled at
the server, database, application, and network level.
Kenexa limits any access to customer recruiting data to personnel
with a business need to know. Kenexa has various security
mechanisms in place to control access to those authorized. Anyone
who has access to customer data is either an employee who signs a
confidentiality agreement or, in very limited cases, a consultant or
third party who has agreed contractually to protect the privacy of
Kenexa‟s data.
For security reasons, Kenexa does not release lists of specific
individuals who are provided access to customer data in connection
with doing their jobs. But described below are various categories of

personnel who have access or might be given access for a specific
business related purpose.
Personnel in Client Services & Support have access when needed to
resolve a customer question or concern. Kenexa support personnel
need access for program error reports and bugs to reproduce that bug
in a customer specific environment because all Kenexa customers are
individually configured. Without that data access, Kenexa cannot
reproduce or fix the bug.
Personnel in Engineering and Quality have access in connection with
the bug fixing and retesting process for the same reasons. Errors
need to be reproduced in a customer environment and fixes need to
be retested in the customer environment.
Kenexa internal ASP Operations and DBA Teams maintain all system
operations and are the server/database administrators for all of
Kenexa‟s clients. In that capacity, these personnel need access to all
Kenexa‟s data and systems to make Kenexa‟s uptime commitments to
customers and to perform maintenance.
Access to Kenexa‟s database servers is controlled at the server,
database, application, and network level.
Redundant internal firewalls between Kenexa‟s Corporate and
Production networks permit direct database access only to those who
require permanent access to production databases for support
purposes. This includes select members of Kenexa‟s engineering team
in addition to Kenexa‟s Hosting Services, SCM and DBA teams. These
individuals are located in a separate VLAN with network connectivity
to both the Production and Disaster Recovery environments.
Engineers requiring temporary access to the production environment
are either temporarily moved to this VLAN or given temporary access
via Kenexa‟s internal access portal to the production environment. All
other traffic is denied with the exception of replication traffic
between Kenexa‟s DR and Production environment and web
connectivity to Kenexa‟s application. Access at all levels is reviewed
on a monthly basis.
Once network access is granted, database access is granted by adding
individuals to pre-defined groups granting the required read and/or
write access to the database. Once an individual has completed
his/her work this access is promptly removed and a new request
must be made if access is again required.
All production server level access is further controlled utilizing RSA
SecurID for two-factor Authentication. This access is limited to
members of Kenexa‟s DBA, SCM, and Hosting Services Teams for
support purposes.
Each client has a unique client ID. All data belonging to a particular
client is uniquely identified via this ID.
KRB controls access to each client‟s data using this unique ID,
ensuring that there can be no inadvertent access to, or release of,
customer data to unauthorized (but valid) users of KRB.

Application access is controlled through Kenexa‟s centralized
'gatekeeper' process. Individuals with permanent access to a client‟s
data include the helpdesk for customer support and the Client
Services Consultant. Members of the engineering team may request
temporary access to a client for a production support purpose. These
are formal requests made to Kenexa‟s gatekeepers with the specific
requirement for access. Each member has their own unique logon id
and password. Once access is granted the individual only has access
to the specific client they are working with. This access is removed
once the work/project has been completed. Access by Kenexa users
is logged within the application and specified as a Kenexa user with
the corresponding individual‟s name. Audit trails are kept for edits to
data in the database. These include the date and time the edits were
made and the IDs of the users who made the edits.
The transport of all application information over public networks is
protected using SSL. Customers may elect to utilize browser
negotiated certs, which will connect at whatever strength the
browser is capable of supporting from 40-bit to 256 bit SSL or at no
additional charge.
In addition to the encryption utilized over public networks, KRB can
encrypt specific fields within the database utilizing AES (256-bit) and
passwords are hashed using SHA-1. Database backups are also
encrypted before being put to media.
For Integrations utilizing FTP, Kenexa BrassRing offers PGP
encryption, FTP over SSL, or FTP over SSH. XML based Integrations
are done over SSL. AES private key or RSA public key encryption may
be utilized to encrypt the integration payload.
Source code is available only within the Kenexa development
organization and is controlled via StarTeam. Only non-critical
JavaScript UI functionality is exposed in the client browser. All
sKenexa‟sce code within the organization is protected by multiple
levels of authentication and network security.
Kenexa is Cybertrust Perimeter Certified and KRB is Cybertrust
Application Certified.
For all applications, users must pass though a login screen and are
assigned a unique username and password that is initially
communicated by client assigned super user. This
username/password combination is validated against values in
Kenexa‟s database. The initial password must be changed at the first
log-in. The super users assigned by the client add and inactivate
users. User-id is 3DES encrypted and passwords are hashed using
SHA-1. Users are able to change their passwords at any time while
logged into the application. Kenexa also provides forgotten password
recovery functionality on the log-in screen, which includes a Webbased query and e-mail response system. A „forgot password‟ link is
provided for users. Once the „forgot password‟ link is selected and a
user-id is provided, an email is sent to the email address currently
associated with the user-id within the application. The email contains
a URL to reset the user password. The URL expires after 8 hours.

When the password is changed the source IP address is captured and
a notification is sent to the user stating that their password has been
changed.
Session Encryption is set to 40/128-bit SSL and Gateways sessions
can be encrypted with SSL.
Fields on forms in KRB can be AES encrypted. Generally, this feature
is used for sensitive information, such as a social security number.
2.

The Peace Corps secures encrypted data in transit by transferring it
via SSL.

3.

The Peace Corps stores data at their headquarters-based datacenter
using a separate subnet, separate managed network switch, and
encrypted SQL server database.

VII.

How will the data be retrieved (e.g., will it be retrieved by a personal
identifier such as name, social security number, address, telephone number
or some other identifier that is unique to an individual)? Will a System of
Record Notice be created under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a?
Data will be retrieved by applicants using an e-mail address and
password that applicants have individually personalized and which
is unique to an individual.
System end users will be able to search and retrieve information
based on a unique identifier assigned to each applicant by the
Kenexa system, as well as searching by name or social security
number. The medical system will also be searchable by a uniquely
assigned case number.
The data collected is currently maintained under a System of
Records: PC-17-Volunteer Applicant and Service Records System.