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Acceptable Use Policy

For using Living Islands' Tools, Equipment, and Online Services

1.0 Overview

Living Islands' intentions for publishing an Acceptable Use Policy are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to Living Islands' established culture of openness, trust, and integrity. Living Islands is committed to protecting Living Islands' 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 Living Islands. These systems are to be used for business purposes in serving the interests of the company, and of our clients and customers in the course of normal operations. Please review Human Resources policies for further details.

Effective security is a team effort involving the participation and support of every Living Islands employee 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 this policy is to outline the acceptable use of computer equipment at Living Islands. These rules are in place to protect the employee and Living Islands. Inappropriate use exposes Living Islands to risks including virus attacks, compromise of network systems and services, and legal issues.

3.0 Scope

This policy applies to employees, contractors, consultants, temporaries, and other workers at Living Islands, including all personnel affiliated with third parties. This policy applies to all equipment that is owned or leased by Living Islands.

4.0 Policy

4.1 General Use and Ownership

  1. While Living Islands' network administration desires to provide a reasonable level of privacy, users should be aware that the data they create on the corporate systems remains the property of Living Islands. Because of the need to protect Living Islands' network, management cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information stored on any network device belonging to Living Islands.
  2. Employees are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use. Individual departments are responsible for creating guidelines concerning the 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.
  3. For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within Living Islands may monitor equipment, systems, and network traffic at any time, per Living Islands' Audit Policy.
  4. Living Islands reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy.

4.2 Security and Proprietary Information

  1. The user interface for information contained on Internet/Intranet/Extranet-related systems should be classified as either confidential or not confidential, as defined by corporate confidentiality guidelines, details of which can be found in Human Resources policies.
    Examples of confidential, information include but are not limited to: company private, corporate strategies, competitor sensitive, trade secrets, specifications, customer lists, and research data. Employees should take all necessary steps to prevent unauthorized access to this information.
  2. 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.
  3. All PC, laptop, and workstations should be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set at 10 minutes or less, or by logging off (control-alt-delete for Win2K users) when the host will be unattended.
  4. Use encryption of information in compliance with Living Islands' Acceptable Encryption Use policy.
  5. Postings by employees from a Living Islands email address to newsgroups should contain a disclaimer stating that the opinions expressed are strictly their own and not necessarily those of Living Islands unless posting is in the course of business duties.
  6. All hosts used by the employee that are connected to the Living Islands Internet/Intranet/Extranet, whether owned by the employee or Living Islands, shall be continually executing approved virus-scanning software with a current virus database unless overridden by departmental or group policy.
  7. 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 of Living Islands authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal or international law while utilizing Living Islands-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.

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, 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 Living Islands.
  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 Living Islands or the end user does not have an active license is strictly prohibited.
  3. Living Islands' Confidential Information policy also applies to blogging. As such, Employees are prohibited from revealing any <Company> confidential or proprietary information, trade secrets or any other material covered by Living Islands' Confidential Information policy when engaged in blogging.
  4. Employees shall not engage in any blogging that may harm or tarnish the image, reputation and/or goodwill of Living Islands and/or any of its employees. Employees are also prohibited from making any discriminatory, disparaging, defamatory or harassing comments when blogging or otherwise engaging in any conduct prohibited by Living Islands' Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policy.
  5. Employees may also not attribute personal statements, opinions or beliefs to Living Islands 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 themselves as an employee or representative of Living Islands. Employees assume any and all risk associated with blogging.
  6. Apart from following all laws pertaining to the handling and disclosure of copyrighted or export controlled materials, Living Islands’s trademarks, logos and any other Living Islands intellectual property may also not be used in connection with any blogging activity

5.0 Enforcement

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

6.0 Definitions

Term Definition

Blogging: Writing a blog. A blog (short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption.

Spam: Unauthorized and/or unsolicited electronic mass mailings.