St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata

Electronic Resources Acceptable Use Policy (ICT Policy)

St. Xavier's College [Autonomous], Kolkata supports an extensive information-technology environment for faculty, staff, students, and other members of the College community. This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) supplements the existing standards and policies of the College by describing the special rights and responsibilities towards the use of the College's "E-Resources".

Scope

This Policy applies to all Information Technology (IT) and other electronic resources of the College ("E-Resources"), including without limitation:

All computers, systems, equipment, software, networks, internet and computer facilities owned, managed, or maintained by the College for the handling of data, voice, television, telephone, or related signals or information;
Any access or use of the College's electronic resources from a computer or other system not controlled or maintained by the College; and,
The creation, processing, communication, distribution, storage, and disposal of information under the College's control.

This Policy applies to all persons who access or use the College's E-Resources including the faculty, staff, students, alumni, and guests.

Purpose

The College makes E-Resources available to support its academic and administrative goals, and uses of E-Resources to advance those goals take precedence over all others.

Within the College community, each person will have differing purposes for using and accessing E-resources; however, each person also has a shared responsibility to utilize those E-resources appropriately and to protect the resources from any kind of impairment and/or unauthorized access or use.

Authorized Uses

E-Resources may be used only for the purposes authorized by the College. These purposes generally comprise work, study, research, serviceor activities consistent with the College's mission and priorities.
Use of E-Resources in connection with academic and co-curricular activities is generally acceptable as long as the activities are otherwise consistent with College's mission and policies.
The College also acknowledges that limited personal use of E-Resources is acceptable in support of its broader goals. Such personal usemust be incidental at most and may not cause the College to incur additional costs. Above all, use of E-Resources for outside or personal purposes is always a privilege, not a right, and may not interfere with use for College purposes.

All use of E-Resources must comply with:

all College policies, procedures, and codes of conduct, including those found in the student, faculty, and employee handbooks;
all laws and regulations applicable to the user or the College; and,
all relevant licenses and other contractual commitments of the College, as modified from time to time.

E-Resources may not be used, committed, or made available, without prior authorization, for:

any ongoing business or other commercial activity not administered by the College;
the benefit of persons or organizations other than the College; or
political, communal or lobbying activities

The College has sole authority to determine what uses of E-Resources are proper and may prohibit or discipline use deemed inconsistent with this Policy or other applicable standards of conduct.

Email

The College may send official correspondence to members of its community via electronic mail. Students, faculty, and staff, are expected to check their email account regularly and are responsible for College information sent there.
College employees are expected to use their College email account for all College-related communications only and not for any personal communications.

Access Restrictions

User IDs and passwords are the primary method used to authenticate users of the College's E-Resources. They help prevent unauthorized access to E-Resources or any restricted information found within them.

Users may not share their passwords with any other person and must protect them from disclosureby, for example, monitoring access to their accounts, and contacting the College's IT Staff if they suspect their passwords have been compromised.
Users may well be held responsible for all activity conducted using their IDs.
No person, including any member of the IT Staff, is authorized to request any user's password.

All users must protect the College's E-Resources from unauthorized access. Specifically, all users must:

Take responsibility for the security and integrity of information stored on any personal or assigned desktop, laptop, or handheld system;
Take care to access E-Resources only from secure environments and to log out of sessions before leaving any computer unattended;
Take all appropriate precautions when accessing confidential or restricted College data to protect the data from unauthorized disclosures and from threats to its accuracy or integrity;
Comply with requests from the IT Staff and other authorized personnel to cease use of E-Resources that compromises the E-Resources or the College; and,
Cooperate with system administrators during investigations of improper use.

And, without authorization, no user may:

Extend the network by introducing a hub, switch, router, wireless access point, or any other service or device that permits more than one device to connect to any College network;
Install any software or programs, and alter any configuration of the hardware and/or software without the authorization from the competent authority;
Provide any other person with E-Resources or access to them;
Send e-mail chain letters or mass mailings for purposes other than authorized College activities;
Alter, remove, or forge email headers, addresses, or messages, or otherwise impersonate or attempt to pass oneself off as another;
Obtain E-Resources beyond those allocated to the user, seek or gain access to data or user accounts for which the user is not authorized, or eavesdrop or intercept transmissions not intended for the user;
Use the College's Internet or other network access in a malicious manner or to alter or destroy any material which the user is not authorized to alter or destroy;
Tamper with, modify, damage, alter, or attempt to defeat restrictions or protection placed on accounts or any E-Resources; or
Damage computer or network systems; create or intentionally introduce or propagate computer viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, or other malicious code to any E-Resource; attempt to degrade the performance of the system or to deprive authorized users of E-Resources or access to E-Resources.

Copyright and other Intellectual Property

Users must respect intellectual-property rights, including copyrights, in all use of College E-Resources. All use of content, including text, images, music, and video, retrieved from E-Resources or stored, transmitted or maintained using E-Resources, must comply with copyright and other applicable laws. Copied material, used legally, must be given attribution in conformance with applicable legal and professional standards.

Software may be copied, installed, or used on College E-Resources only as permitted by the software's owner or authorized licensor and by law. Proprietary software must be properly licensed, and users must strictly adhere to all applicable license provisions (including those concerning installation, use, copying, and the number of simultaneous users).

Privacy

Users must honor the rights of others to privacy, academic freedom, and freedom from harassment. Users may not use E-Resources to threaten or harass any person or to create a hostile place to work or study. In particular, users must honor others' requests for the user to stop sending unwanted communications of any kind.

Users may not do anything to interfere inappropriately with others' use of E-Resources, including by consuming E-Resources in excess.

The College recognizes the importance of privacy in an academic setting and does not routinely monitor a current user's email, data, software, or other online activity. There are limited circumstances, however, in which the College may access, monitor, limit and/or disclose a users communications or other data on eResources without the users permission.

These circumstances include the following:

To maintain the integrity of its systems, network or data;
When required by federal, state or local law, administrative rules, court order or other legal authority;
To preserve the health and safety of individuals or the College community;
When there are reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of law or a significant breach of College policy may have taken place and access, inspection or monitoring may produce evidence related to the possible misconduct; or
To address a legitimate business need.

Such College access to a users communications or other data on eResources without the users permission will occur only with the approval of competent College authority. In cases of emergency where necessary to preserve the integrity of the system, comply with laws or other legal authority, or preserve health and safety, the College may access, monitor, limit and/ordisclose a users communications or other data on eResources without seeking the above-describedpermission. In that instance, the Systems Incharge or designee will intimate any emergency access forreview by competent College authority. The College cannot guarantee the security of those eResources against unauthorized access or disclosure.

Supervision of E-Resources

Authorized employees of the College responsible for the daily administration of the College's E-Resources, may:

Take all reasonable steps necessary to preserve the availability and integrity of E-Resources, including blocking any user's access to E-Resources;
Reject or destroy e-mail messages, e-mail attachments, and other files suspected of being spam or containing malicious code, such as viruses and worms;
Exercise administrative authority over networks, systems, or software in order to grant users access to read, write, edit, or delete information in files or databases, to establish security controls and protection for information and E-Resources, or to address claims that intellectual-property or other rights have been violated;
Employ a variety of security monitoring devices and tools to identify misuse or unauthorized use of E-Resources;
With the approval of the competent authority, temporarily shut off the College's Internet connection, servers, or services, without prior notice, in order to protect College systems, data, and users or to protect other important interests of the College;
Temporarily or permanently terminate users' use of E-Resources to investigate or remedy any threat to E-Resources or violation of this Policy; and,
Exercise administrative rights over certain E-Resources, if those rights are delegated by the competent authority.

Disclaimers

The E-Resources and anything accessible on or through them are made available "as is" and "as available." The College makes no guarantee that any E-Resource will be free of objectionable matter, errors, defects, bugs, viruses, worms, "Trojan horses," or other destructive features. The College is not responsible for any harm arising from E-Resources or users' reliance on them, nor is it responsible for any third-party content accessed using College E-Resources, including content made available by another College user or any third party.

This Policy is not a complete statement of the College's rights or remedies, and nothing in this Policy waives any of those rights or remedies, including any rights in or to the E-Resources.

Changes to this Policy

The College reserves the right to change this Policy at any time. The College may, in its discretion, provide users with additional notice of significant changes. A user's continued use of any E-Resources after any changes are published binds the user to the revised Policy.