Email, Internet and Password Policies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Email, Internet and Password Policies

Student’s Name

Institutional affiliation

Date

 

 

 

 

 

 

POLICY FOR INTERNET USE

Policy outline and Brief

The company values internet resources because it allows for effective communication and easy access to resources online and in the cloud storage. Using the internet inappropriately could pose a threat to the company by bringing privacy, security and legal risks. All employees affiliated with the company must understand the appropriate use of internet resources in the company (SANS, 2020).

Aim

The aim of this policy is to outline to the employees and affiliates of this company on the practices that are considered acceptable and unacceptable by the company’s administration.

Scope

This policy covers appropriate use of WI-FI and internet resources. This policy is applicable to all the company’s affiliates, including employees, agents, and suppliers who have access to the internet.

The policy

The appropriate use of internet resources in this company entails the following:

1. The company’s Internet resources will be used ethically following guidelines provided by the ethical code of conduct of this company.
2. This company’s internet sources will be used primarily for locating those online resources that will help in business processes that consequently help the company achieve its business objectives and maintain competitive advantages against its industry rivals.
3. Personal use of internet resources is allowed to a reasonable extent in the event that this personal use contributes to the achievement of the company’s business objectives and is ethical.
4. The company’s internet resources shall not be used to develop, send or receive, motivate or sensitize employees or affiliates of the company towards supporting any form of bias or malicious intent towards diversity and inclusion, segregation or any social injustice that offends human rights. Any employee who receives such proceedings’ information should report to the relevant authorities with immediate effect (Goodman, 2016).
5. The internet shall not be used to download any form of application or software to the company’s computers without authorization and clearance from the IT teams.
6. The company’s internet resources shall not be used to access any sites or platforms that go against the company’s ethical standing.  Any such incidences will attract disciplinary action.
7. All of the company’s internet data is considered official data of the company and is liable to disclosure for any legal purposes.
8. All internet resources are considered part of the company’s ownership, and the company will reserve the right to monitor all of the internet data created, sent and received from the company’s internet resources.
9. The company will monitor all the website history of its users and disable access to some sites if they are found to be of no productive use to the company’s attainment of excellence.
10. All employees are required to ensure that their VPN is always on at all times. The resources downloaded over the internet are scanned for viruses by the company’s free antivirus tools available in all the company’s Personal Computers.

Policy compliance and Disciplinary action

In conjunction with the IT team, the Human Resources Department team will be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that employees of the company have complied with all of the policy statements stated herein. To ensure this, audit data may be collected periodically and at random to ensure audit reports towards policy compliance have been retrieved. Exceptions to internet use policy will be communicated to and receive prior authorization from the relevant usage. In the case that the company notices instances of non-compliance, penalties will be warranted according to the weight of the offense leveled against the employee (Syahrial et al., 2019).

EMAIL ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

Outline

The key resource for all internal and external official communications in the company is the email, and this gives it its prominent value in the company. This means that all critical information in the company and files are stored in emails received or sent. There has been a rise in incidences of a cyber attack, so we have to ensure that all data in the company’s email are protected from such attacks. All those affiliated to the company and those that use the company’s email resources must understand the acceptable use to ensure that they have not placed the company at risk of cyber attack and violation of privacy and legal regulations (SANS, 2020).

Aim

This policy aims to outline the practices of email users that are classified as appropriate and which ones are prohibited by the company. This policy also aims to discuss protocols in place to secure communications through emails of the company.

Scope

This email policy is applicable to all employees, agents, suppliers and all other affiliates of this company who use the company’s official email for communications in conducting business operations (Workable, 2020).

Policy

1. The use of the company’s email resources should be done in consideration with the company’s code of ethics to send, receive, or respond to emails.
2. Email resources of the company are to be used for the sole purpose of business with a reasonable allowance of personal use for purposes not related to business.
3. The company’s emails shall not be used to sign up for any websites without prior clearance from the relevant IT authorities.
4. Emails sent and received through the company’s emails are considered the company’s intellectual property and must be encrypted at all times.
5. It is prohibited for any parties to use the resources of this company’s emails to either develop, share or motivate other employees and unrelated third parties towards malicious intentions that are aimed at diversity and inclusion in the company. All of such incidences should be reported to relevant authorities in the company.
6. The company’s email content shall not be forwarded to or stored in any third-party devices that are not authenticated and cleared by the IT teams.

Policy compliance

The human resources and IT departments will be responsible for ensuring that all of this email policy’s components have been followed to the latter. Periodical audit materials will be picked at random to assess for compliance. Any cases of non-compliance will attract penalties as per the level of severity and may include termination of job contracts. Any exceptions towards any component of this email policy will be subject to approval by relevant authorities prior to such exceptions being executed.

PASSWORD PROTECTION POLICY

The following are expected of all employees and affiliates of this company in regard to passwords of the end-user PCs.

1. All passwords must be a combination of uppercase and lowercase characters and may include numbers.
2. All passwords must be kept confidential and not stored in any accessible material at the workplace or out of the offices.
3. All passwords must contain more than eight characters, including letters and numbers.
4. Employee emails, phone numbers or identity card numbers, birth dates and any other easily breakable combinations shall not be used as passwords for any purpose.
5. All passwords will have an expiration period of 4 months, after which all employees and affiliates must provide a new password (Johansson et al., 2019).
6. All employees and affiliates will be required to reauthenticate with their old passwords before entering a new password.

References

Goodman, S., Straub, D. W., & Baskerville, R. (2016). Information security: policy, processes, and practices. Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315288697

Johansson, J. M., Brezinski, D. I., & Hamer, K. L. (2019). U.S. Patent No. 10,404,683. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved from https://patents.google.com/patent/US10404683B2/en

SANS (2020) Information Security Policy Templates. Retrieved from https://www.sans.org/security-resources/policies/

Syahrial, H., Prabowo, H., Budiastuti, D., & Gaol, F. L. (2019). Information Security Policy Compliance Model at Indonesian Government Institutions: A Conceptual Framework. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Data Engineering 2015 (DaEng-2015) (pp. 393-401). Springer, Singapore. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-1799-6_41

Workable, (2020). Corporate email usage policy template. Retrieved from https://resources.workable.com/email-usage-policy-template