Acceptable Use Guidelines

University Acceptable Usage Policy

1.0 Overview

The Office of Information Technology’s intentions for publishing Acceptable Use Guidelines are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to the College of Public Health’s established culture of openness, trust and integrity. The College of Public Health is committed to protecting College of Public Health employees, students and partners 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 the College of Public Health and the University of Iowa. These systems are to be used for business, research and educational purposes in serving the interests of the college.

Effective security is a team effort involving the participation and support of every College of Public Health employee, student 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 these guidelines is to outline the acceptable use of computer equipment at the College of Public Health. These rules are in place to protect the employees, students and partners of the College of Public Health and the University of Iowa. Inappropriate use of information technology resources exposes the College of Public Health to risks, including virus attacks, compromise of network systems and services, and legal issues.

3.0 Scope

These guidelines apply to employees, students and partners at the College of Public Health. These guidelines apply to all equipment that is owned or leased by the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa.

4.0 Policy

4.1 General Use and Ownership

Employees and students 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.
The Office of Information Technology recommends that any information that users consider sensitive or vulnerable be encrypted.
For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within the College of Public Health may monitor equipment, systems and network traffic at any time.
The College of Public Health reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with these guidelines.

4.2 Security and Proprietary Information

The user interface for information contained on Internet/Intranet/Extranet-related systems should be classified as either confidential or not confidential. Examples of confidential information include but are not limited to: research data, coursework, exams, financial data, and human resources data. Employees should take all necessary steps to prevent unauthorized access to this information.
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.
All PCs, laptops and workstations should be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set at 60 minutes or less, or by logging-off (control-alt-delete for NT/Win2K/XP users) when the host will be unattended.
Use encryption of information when possible.
Because information contained on portable computers is especially vulnerable, special care should be exercised with portable computers, such as laptops, PDAs, tablets and so on.
All hosts used by the employee or student that are connected to the College of Public Health Internet/Intranet/Extranet, whether owned by the employee, student or College of Public Health, shall be continually executing approved virus-scanning software with a current virus database, unless overridden by departmental or group policy.
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 or student of the College of Public Health authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal or international law while utilizing College of Public Health-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:

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 the College of Public Health.
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 the College of Public Health or the end user does not have an active license is strictly prohibited.
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.
Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (e.g., viruses, worms, Trojan horses, e-mail bombs, etc.).
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.
Using a College of Public Health computing asset 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.
Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services originating from any College of Public Health account.
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.
Port scanning or security scanning unless prior notification and approval by the Office of Information Technology.
Executing any form of network monitoring which will intercept data not intended for the user’s host, unless this activity is a part of the user’s normal job/duty.
Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account.
Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the user’s host (for example, denial of service attack).
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.
Providing information about, or lists of, College of Public Health employees or students to parties outside the College of Public Health.

Email and Communications Activities

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).
Any form of harassment via email, telephone or paging, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages.
Unauthorized use, or forging, of email header information.
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.
Creating or forwarding “chain letters,” “Ponzi,” or other “pyramid” schemes of any type.
Use of unsolicited email originating from within the College of Public Health’s networks of other Internet/Intranet/Extranet service providers on behalf of, or to advertise, any service hosted by the College of Public Health or connected via the College of Public Health’s network.
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 these guidelines 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.