acceptable use policy

This paper is intended for IT decision makers, HR managers and executives responsible for adopting and enforcing email and Web Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) within an organization.

This paper is intended for IT decision makers, HR managers and executives responsible for adopting and enforcing email and Web Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) within an organization.

Understand the legal issues if you do not conduct a risk assessment before creating your AUP.

Many small and medium-sized businesses do not have adequate network security. Here's how to make sure you do. Now more than ever, you depend on your network for your most important business operations, such as communication, inventory, billing, sales, and trading with partners. Yet up to now, you might have held off on protecting your network, for several reasons.

Corporate computers and information and communications systems (collectively, “electronic resources”) remain the workhorse for most businesses, even as alternatives, such as third-party text messaging services, external social media, and cloud computing, flourish. Employees rely on corporate electronic resources for e-mail, calendaring, business contacts, Internet access, document creation and storage, and a multitude of other business applications. Consequently, for employers, it is critical to establish and maintain their right to inspect all information stored on, and to monitor all communications transmitted by, corporate electronic resources. The corporate acceptable use policy is the linchpin of that effort. The ten tips below are intended to aid employers who either want to implement an acceptable use policy for the first time, or who need to update their policy.

More than ever, SMBs need to focus on security as part of their IT infrastructure, building around it rather than considering it as an afterthought. This has become even more critical over the past few years as many businesses have unwittingly lost their customers’ personal data due to security breaches, and as states and countries have responded by enacting laws to force the businesses to implement additional levels of protection.

This guide provides an example of an acceptable use policy of computer systems at an organization.