1.0 Overview This company's intentions for publishing an Acceptable Use Policy are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to this company. Established culture of openness, trust and integrity. This company is committed to protecting this company's Employees, partners and the company from illegal or damaging actions by individuals, either knowingly or unknowingly. Internet/Intranet/Extranet-related systems, including but not limited to computer equipment, software, operating systems, storage media, network accounts providing electronic mail, WWW browsing, and FTP, are the property of this company. These systems are to be used for business purposes in serving the interests of the company, and of our clients and customers in the course of normal operations. Please review Human Resources policies for further details. Effective security is a team effort involving the participation and support of every this company Employee and affiliate who deals with information and/or information systems. It is the responsibility of every computer user to know these guidelines, and to conduct their activities accordingly. 2.0 Purpose The purpose of this policy is to outline the acceptable use of computer equipment at this company. These rules are in place to protect the Employee and this company. Inappropriate use exposes this company to risks including virus attacks, compromise of network systems and services, and legal issues. 3.0 Scope This policy applies to Employees, contractors, consultants, temporaries, and other workers at this company, including all personnel affiliated with third parties. This policy applies to all equipment that is owned or leased by this company. 4.0 Policy 4.1 General Use and Ownership 1. While this company's network administration desires to provide a reasonable level of privacy, users should be aware that the data they create on the corporate systems remains the property of this company. Because of the need to protect this company's network, management cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information stored on any network device belonging to this company. 2. Employees are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use. Individual departments are responsible for creating guidelines concerning personal use of Internet/Intranet/Extranet systems. In the absence of such policies, Employees should be guided by departmental policies on personal use, and if there is any uncertainty, Employees should consult their supervisor or manager. 3. This company recommends that any information that users consider sensitive or vulnerable be encrypted. For guidelines on information classification, see this company's Information Sensitivity Policy. For guidelines on encrypting email and documents, go to this company's Awareness Initiative. 4. For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within this company may monitor equipment, systems and network traffic at any time, per this company's Audit Policy. 5. This company reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy. 4.2 Security and Proprietary Information 1. The user interface for information contained on Internet/Intranet/Extranet-related systems should be classified as either confidential or not confidential, as defined by corporate confidentiality guidelines, details of which can be found in Human Resources policies. Examples of confidential information include but are not limited to: company private, corporate strategies, competitor sensitive, trade secrets, specifications, customer lists, and research data. Employees should take all necessary steps to prevent unauthorized access to this information. 2. Keep passwords secure and do not share accounts. Authorized users are responsible for the security of their passwords and accounts. System level passwords should be changed quarterly, user level passwords should be changed every six months. 3. All PCs, laptops and workstations should be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set at 10 minutes or less, or by logging-off (control-alt-delete for Win2K users) when the host will be unattended. 4. Use encryption of information in compliance with this company's Acceptable Encryption Use policy. 5. Because information contained on portable computers is especially vulnerable, special care should be exercised. Protect laptops in accordance with the “Laptop Security Tips? 6. Postings by Employees from a this company email address to newsgroups should contain a disclaimer stating that the opinions expressed are strictly their own and not necessarily those of this company, unless posting is in the course of business duties. 7. All hosts used by the Employee that are connected to this company's Internet/Intranet/Extranet, whether owned by the Employee or this company, shall be continually executing approved virus-scanning software with a current virus database. Unless overridden by departmental or group policy. 8. Employees must use extreme caution when opening e-mail attachments received from unknown senders, which may contain viruses, e-mail bombs, or Trojan horse code. 4.3. Unacceptable Use The following activities are, in general, prohibited. Employees may be exempted from these restrictions during the course of their legitimate job responsibilities (e.g., systems administration staff may have a need to disable the network access of a host if that host is disrupting production services). Under no circumstances is an Employee of this company authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal or international law while utilizing this company-owned resources. The lists below are by no means exhaustive, but attempt to provide a framework for activities which fall into the category of unacceptable use. System and Network Activities The following activities are strictly prohibited, with no exceptions: 1. Violations of the rights of any person or company protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property, or similar laws or regulations, including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of "pirated" or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by this company. 2. Unauthorized copying of copyrighted material including, but not limited to, digitization and distribution of photographs from magazines, books or other copyrighted sources, copyrighted music, and the installation of any copyrighted software for which this company or the end user does not have an active license is strictly prohibited. 3. Exporting software, technical information, encryption software or technology, in violation of international or regional export control laws, is illegal. The appropriate management should be consulted prior to export of any material that is in question. 4. Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (e.g., viruses, worms, Trojan horses, e-mail bombs, etc.). 5. Revealing your account password to others or allowing use of your account by others. This includes family and other household members when work is being done at home. 6. Using one of this company's computing assets to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that is in violation of sexual harassment or hostile workplace laws in the user's local jurisdiction. 7. Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services originating from any this company account. 8. Making statements about warranty, expressly or implied, unless it is a part of normal job duties. 9. Effecting security breaches or disruptions of network communication. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the Employee is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the Employee is not expressly authorized to access, unless these duties are within the scope of regular duties. For purposes of this section, "disruption" includes, but is not limited to, network sniffing, pinged floods, packet spoofing, denial of service, and forged routing information for malicious purposes. 10. Port scanning or security scanning is expressly prohibited unless prior notification to this company security team is made. 11. Executing any form of network monitoring which will intercept data not intended for the Employee's host, unless this activity is a part of the Employee's normal job/duty. 12. Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account. 13. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the Employee's host (for example, denial of service attack). 14. Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, with the intent to interfere with, or disable, a user's terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet/Intranet/Extranet. 15. Providing information about, or lists of, this company Employees to parties outside this company. Email and Communications Activities 1. Sending unsolicited email messages, including the sending of "junk mail" or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material (email spam). 2. Any form of harassment via email, telephone or paging, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages. 3. Unauthorized use, or forging, of email header information. 4. Solicitation of email for any other email address, other than that of the poster's account, with the intent to harass or to collect replies. 5. Creating or forwarding "chain letters", "Ponzi" or other "pyramid" schemes of any type. 6. Use of unsolicited email originating from within this company's networks of other Internet/Intranet/Extranet service providers on behalf of, or to advertise, any service hosted by this company or connected via this company's network. 7. Posting the same or similar non-business-related messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroups (newsgroup spam). 5.0 Enforcement Any Employee found to have violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment. 6.0 Definitions Term Definition Spam Unauthorized and/or unsolicited electronic mass mailings. 7.0 Revision History