Access to computer systems and networks owned or operated by the College of St. Scholastica is a privilege that imposes certain responsibilities and obligations and is granted subject to College policies and local, state and federal laws. The objective of this policy is to ensure an available, reliable, secure and responsive network environment at the College of St. Scholastica. It is the responsibility of each user to ensure that the College’s technology is used appropriately.
Any activity that compromises the performance of the College’s computers and/or network such that others are negatively affected is not acceptable. Acceptable use is always ethical, reflects academic honesty and shows restraint in the consumption of shared resources. It demonstrates respect for intellectual property, ownership of data, system security mechanisms and an individual’s rights to privacy and freedom from intimidation, harassment and unwarranted annoyance. If any use adversely impacts the network, the user will be asked to reconfigure his or her work so that network impact is avoided.
Examples of Inappropriate Use At Any Time Include, But Are Not Limited To
- 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 St. Scholastica
- 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 or the end-user does not have an active license
- Introduction of malicious programs onto any device connected to the campus network (i.e., viruses, worms, Trojan horses, email bombs, etc.)
- Revealing your account password to others or allowing the use of your account by others. This includes student employees as well as family and other household members when work is being done at home
- Using a College 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 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 is expressly prohibited unless prior notification to the Information Technologies Department is made
- 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
- Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account
- Interfering with or denying service to any user or network (i.e. 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