Acceptable Use Policy

Overview

Infosec's intentions for publishing an Acceptable Use Policy are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to InContext Solutions' established culture of openness, trust and integrity. Infosec is committed to protecting InContext Solutions' 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 InContext Solutions (the "Company"). These systems are to be used for business purposes in serving the interests of the company, and of our clients and customers during normal operations. Please review Human Resources policies for further details. Employees and other users of Company information systems have no expectation of privacy in their use of Company information systems, and all use of Company information systems is subject to monitoring by the Company.

Effective security is a team effort involving the participation and support of every InContext Solutions employee 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.

Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to outline the acceptable use of computer equipment at InContext Solutions. These rules are in place to protect the employee and InContext Solutions. Inappropriate use exposes InContext Solutions to risks including virus attacks, compromise of network systems and services, and legal issues.

Scope

This policy applies to the use of information systems, electronic and computing devices, and network resources to conduct InContext Solutions business or interact with internal networks and business systems. All employees, contractors, consultants, temporary, and other workers at InContext Solutions and its subsidiaries are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding appropriate use of information, electronic devices, and network resources in accordance with Company policies and standards as well as applicable laws.

This policy applies to all employees at InContext Solutions. This policy applies to all equipment that is owned or leased by InContext Solutions.

Policy

General Use and Ownership

InContext Solutions proprietary information stored on electronic and computing devices whether owned or leased by InContext Solutions, the employee or a third party, remains the sole property of InContext Solutions.

You have a responsibility to promptly report the theft, loss or unauthorized disclosure of InContext Solutions' proprietary information.

You may access, use or share InContext Solutions' proprietary information only to the extent it is authorized and necessary to fulfill your assigned job duties or where disclosure is otherwise allowed by law.

Employees are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use of Company information systems.

Authorized individuals within InContext Solutions may monitor equipment, systems and network traffic at any time. Users of Company information systems have no expectation of privacy with respect to the use of such systems.

InContext Solutions reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy.

Security and Proprietary Information

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

2. 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.

3. Employees must not post from an InContext Solutions email address to newsgroups unless the posting is in the course of business duties.

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

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 InContext Solutions authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under applicable law while utilizing Company-owned resources.

The lists below are by no means exhaustive but attempt to provide a framework for activities that 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 protections, 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 InContext Solutions.

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 InContext Solutions or the end user does not have an active license.

3. Exporting software, technical information, encryption software or technology, in violation of applicable export control laws. 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 an InContext Solutions computing asset to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that violates the Company's policy prohibiting sexual or other unlawful harassment.

7. Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services originating from any InContext Solutions account.

8. Making statements about warranty, expressly or impliedly, 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 Infosec 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. Introducing honeypots, honeynets, or similar technology on the InContext Solutions network.

14. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the employee's host (for example, denial of service attack).

15. 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.

Email and Communication Activities

When using Company resources to access and use the Internet, users must realize they represent the Company. Whenever employees state an affiliation to the Company on a personal post, they must also clearly indicate that "the opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of InContext Solutions." Questions may be addressed to the IT Department. The below activities are prohibited while using Company information systems:

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. Posting the same or similar non-business-related messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroups (newsgroup spam).

Blogging and Social Media

1. Blogging by employees, whether using InContext Solutions' property and systems or personal computer systems, is also subject to the terms and restrictions set forth in this Policy. Limited and occasional use of InContext Solutions' systems to engage in blogging is acceptable, provided that it is done in a professional and responsible manner, does not otherwise violate InContext Solutions' policies, and does not interfere with an employee's regular work duties. Blogging from InContext Solutions' systems is also subject to monitoring.

2. InContext Solutions' Confidential Information policy also applies to blogging. As such, employees are prohibited from revealing any trade secret, confidential, or proprietary information of the Company when engaged in blogging. Trade secret, confidential, and proprietary information is information that derives value from the fact that it is not known to the general public, and includes such things as business plans, client lists, marketing information, and financial information of the Company that may be disclosed to employees as part of their job duties. Trade secret, confidential, and proprietary information does not include: (a) information about an employee's own wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment; and (b) information regarding the wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment for other employees of the Company, except where an employee has access to such information only because of the nature of the employee's job functions or where the employee's job functions include safeguarding employee personnel information.

3. Employees are prohibited from making any discriminatory, disparaging, defamatory or harassing comments when blogging or otherwise engaging in any conduct prohibited by InContext Solutions' Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy.

4. Employees may also not attribute personal statements, opinions or beliefs to InContext Solutions when engaged in blogging. If an employee is expressing his or her beliefs and/or opinions in blogs, the employee may not, expressly or implicitly, represent himself/herself as an employee or representative of InContext Solutions. Employees assume any and all risk associated with blogging for personal reasons.

5. Apart from following all laws pertaining to the handling and disclosure of copyrighted or export-controlled materials, InContext Solutions' trademarks, logos and any other InContext Solutions intellectual property may also not be used in connection with any blogging activity.

Policy Compliance

Compliance Measurement

The Infosec team will verify compliance with this policy through various methods, including but not limited to, business tool reports, internal and external audits, and feedback to the policy owner.

Exceptions

Any exception to the policy must be approved by the Infosec team in advance.

Non-Compliance

An employee found to have violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

Related Standards, Policies and Processes

None.

Definitions and Terms

The following definition and terms can be found in the SANS Glossary located at:

https://www.sans.org/security-resources/glossary-of-terms/

• Blogging
• Honeypot
• Honeynet
• Proprietary Information
• Spam

Revision History