Acceptable use of computer and network facilities.
Such a policy should be produced to ensure safe computing and prevent misuse of the company computers and then distributed to all the employees who use the computer systems, requesting their signatures to ensure they have read and understood the policy.
The policy may include such things as:
- Not allowing the downloading of any files from the internet (other than updates for example)
- Not allowing users to run any unsolicited executable files
- Not allowing the opening of unsolicited documents and spreadsheets
- Not allowing the employees to play games on the computers
- Not allowing the use of screensavers other than the systems default selection
- Some sort of system whereby executable files arriving in emails from outside sources would have to be checked and approved by the IT department.
This computer use policy could also act to set some useful precedents for example:
- Asking all the staff to save all Word documents as RTF files (.DOC files can conceal viruses)
- Asking all the staff to be vigilant when opening emails especially those that are not from known sources
- Asking all the staff to forward any suspicious emails to the IT department to be checked
- Asking all the staff to report immediately to the IT department if they think their computer has become infected with a virus or Trojan.
