Infosec’s intentions for publishing an Acceptable Use Policy are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to CrowdFiber’s established culture of openness, trust, and integrity. Infosec is committed to protecting CrowdFiber's 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 CrowdFiber. 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 CrowdFiber 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.

The purpose of this policy is to outline the acceptable use of computer equipment at CrowdFiber. These rules are in place to protect the employee and CrowdFiber. Inappropriate use exposes CrowdFiber to risks including virus attacks, compromise of network systems and services, and legal issues.

General Use and Ownership

  1. CrowdFiber proprietary information stored on electronic and computing devices, whether owned or leased by CrowdFiber, the employee or a third party, remains the sole property of CrowdFiber. You must ensure through legal or technical means that proprietary information is protected in accordance with the Data Protection Standard.
  2. You have a responsibility to promptly report the theft, loss or unauthorized disclosure of CrowdFiber proprietary information.
  3. You may access, use, or share CrowdFiber proprietary information only to the extent it is authorized and necessary to fulfill your assigned job duties.
  4. Employees are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use. Individual departments are responsible for creating guidelines concerning 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.
  5. For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within CrowdFiber may monitor equipment, systems and network traffic at any time, per Infosec's Audit Policy.
  6. CrowdFiber reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy.

Security and Proprietary Information

  1. All mobile and computing devices that connect to the internal network must comply with the Minimum Access Policy.
  2. System-level and user-level passwords must comply with the Password Policy. Providing access to another individual, either deliberately or through failure to secure its access, is prohibited.
  3. All computing devices must be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set to 10 minutes or less. You must lock the screen or log off when the device is unattended.
  4. Postings by employees from a CrowdFiber email address to newsgroups should contain a disclaimer stating that the opinions expressed are strictly their own and not necessarily those of CrowdFiber unless posting is in the course of business duties.
  5. Employees must use extreme caution when opening email attachments received from unknown senders, which may contain malware.

Unacceptable Use

The following activities are, in general, prohibited. Employees may be exempt 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 CrowdFiber authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal, or international law while utilizing CrowdFiber-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 CrowdFiber.
  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 CrowdFiber or the end-user does not have an active license, is prohibited.
  3. Accessing data, a server, or an account for any purpose other than conducting CrowdFiber business, even if you have authorized access, is prohibited.
  4. Exporting software, technical information, encryption software or technology, in violation of international or regional export control laws, is illegal. The appropriate management should be consulted prior to the export of any material that is in question.
  5. Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (e.g., viruses, worms, Trojan horses, email bombs, etc.).
  6. Revealing your account password to others or allowing the use of your account by others. This includes family and other household members when work is being done at home.
  7. Using a CrowdFiber computing asset to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that is in violation of sexual harassment or hostile workplace laws in the user's local jurisdiction.
  8. Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services originating from any CrowdFiber account.
  9. Making statements about warranty, expressly or implied, unless it is a part of normal job duties.
  10. Effecting security breaches or disruptions of network communication. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the employee is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the employee is not expressly authorized to access unless these duties are within the scope of regular duties. For purposes of this section, "disruption" includes, but is not limited to, network sniffing, pinged floods, packet spoofing, denial of service, and forged routing information for malicious purposes.
  11. Port scanning or security scanning is expressly prohibited unless prior notification to Infosec is made.
  12. Executing any form of network monitoring which will intercept data not intended for the employee's host, unless this activity is a part of the employee's normal job/duty.
  13. Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network, or account, unless this activity is a part of the employee's normal job/duty.
  14. Introducing unapproved honeypots, honeynets, or similar technology on the CrowdFiber network unless this activity is a part of the employee's normal job/duty.
  15. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the employee's host (for example, denial of service attack) unless this activity is a part of the employee's normal job/duty.
  16. Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, with the intent to interfere with, or disable, a user's terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet/Intranet/Extranet unless this activity is a part of the employee's normal job/duty.
  17. Providing information about, or lists of, CrowdFiber employees to parties outside CrowdFiber.

Email and Communication Activities

When using company resources to access and use the Internet, users must realize they represent the company. Whenever employees state an affiliation to the company, they must also clearly indicate that "the opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of the company". Questions may be addressed to the CTO.

  1. Sending unsolicited email messages, including the sending of "junk mail" or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material (email spam).
  2. Any form of harassment via email, telephone or paging, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages.
  3. Unauthorized use, or forging, of email header information.
  4. Solicitation of email for any other email address, other than that of the poster's account, with the intent to harass or to collect replies.
  5. Creating or forwarding "chain letters," "Ponzi" or other "pyramid" schemes of any type.
  6. Use of unsolicited email originating from within CrowdFiber's networks of other Internet/Intranet/Extranet service providers on behalf of, or to advertise, any service hosted by CrowdFiber or connected via CrowdFiber's network.
  7. Posting the same or similar non-business-related messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroups (newsgroup spam).

Blogging and Social Media

  1. Blogging by employees, whether using CrowdFiber’s property and systems or personal computer systems, is also subject to the terms and restrictions set forth in this Policy. Limited and occasional use of CrowdFiber’s systems to engage in blogging is acceptable, provided that it is done in a professional and responsible manner, does not otherwise violate CrowdFiber’s policy, is not detrimental to CrowdFiber’s best interests, and does not interfere with an employee's regular work duties. Blogging from CrowdFiber’s systems is also subject to monitoring.
  2. CrowdFiber’s Confidential Information policy also applies to blogging. As such, Employees are prohibited from revealing any CrowdFiber confidential or proprietary information, trade secrets, or any other material covered by CrowdFiber’s Confidential Information policy when engaged in blogging.
  3. Employees shall not engage in any blogging that may harm or tarnish the image, reputation, and/or goodwill of CrowdFiber/any of its employees. Employees are also prohibited from making any discriminatory, disparaging, defamatory, or harassing comments when blogging.
  4. Employees may also not attribute personal statements, opinions, or beliefs to CrowdFiber 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 CrowdFiber. Employees assume any and all risks associated with blogging.
  5. Apart from following all laws pertaining to the handling and disclosure of copyrighted or export controlled materials, CrowdFiber’s trademarks, logos, and any other CrowdFiber intellectual property may also not be used in connection with any blogging activity without permission.