General Use and Ownership

(Organization) proprietary information saved on electronic and computing devices whether owned or leased by (Organization), the employee or a third party, remains the sole property of (Organization).  You must ensure through legal or technical means that proprietary information is protected in accordance with the Data Protection Standard.

You have a responsibility to report the theft, loss or unauthorized disclosure of (Organization) proprietary information.

You may access, use or share (Organization) proprietary information only to the extent it is authorized and necessary to fulfill your assigned job requirements.

Every Employee is 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.

For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within (Organization) may monitor equipment, systems and network traffic at any time, per Monitoring and Audit Policies.

(Organization) reserves the right to audit networks and systems periodically to ensure compliance with this policy.

Unacceptable Use

The following activities are, in general, banned. 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 (Organization) authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, local or international law while utilizing (Organization)-owned resources. 

The lists below are by no means extensive, but attempt to provide a framework for activities which fall into the category of unacceptable use.

Security and Proprietary Information

All mobile and computing devices that connect to the internal network must comply with the Access control Policy.

System level and user level passwords must comply with the Password Policy. Providing access to another individual, either deliberately or through failure to secure its access, is prohibited.

All computing devices must be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set to 10 minutes or less. You must lock the screen or log off when the device is unattended. 

Postings by employees from a (Organization) email address to newsgroups should contain a disclaimer stating that the opinions expressed are strictly their own and not necessarily representing the (Organization)’s opinions, unless posting is in the course of business duties. 

Employees must use extreme caution when opening e-mail attachments received from unknown senders, which may contain malware.