User Registration

General

• Do not disclose any confidential, sensitive or proprietary company information. (“Confidential information” is defined in his handbook. Confidential, sensitive or proprietary information shall be jointly referred to as “confidential” in this policy.)
• Employees are responsible for protecting their own passwords and may not reveal their passwords to others or allow use of their account to others. This includes family or household members. Accessing other employees’ voicemail or e-mail without company authorization is prohibited. In addition, providing information to non-authorized individuals on how to access or use company equipment is prohibited. Employees may need to periodically change their password to assure protection to the systems.
• If access to company systems is granted on an employee’s personal computer, that personal computer is subject to the same guidelines as those applied to company provided equipment.
• The Company may have a litigation hold policy that applies to certain electronic information which may need to be made available during covered litigation. All employees must follow the hold policy once a hold is announced.
• These resources are company property and are to be used solely for business purposes. For instance, The Company strongly discourages sending e-mails, phone messages or other communiqués containing individual political, religious, moral, etc. viewpoints.

E-mail

• Fraudulent, harassing, threatening, discriminatory, derogatory, off-color, obscene messages or materials, or those containing sexual innuendo or off-color jokes, are not to be transmitted, printed, requested or stored. Chain letters, solicitation and other forms of mass mailings are not permitted.
• Messages may not be transmitted, printed, requested or stored which are illegal, against company policy or contrary to The Company’s interest, including message spoofing. Under no circumstances is any employee to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal or international law while utilizing company-owned resources.
• Employees must use extreme caution when opening e-mail attachments received from unknown senders, which may contain viruses, e-mail bombs or other codes.

• Because internal e-mail addresses indicate an affiliation with The Company, no messages may be posted on an Internet bulletin board, blog, in a forum or any other publicly available Internet site that in any manner refers to The Company, or that might be interpreted as stating a company position or policy.
• Company employees, contractors and consultants with remote access privileges to The Company’s corporate network must not use non-Company e-mail accounts (e.g., Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc.) or other external resources to conduct company business. This will ensure that official business is never confused with personal business.
• The exchange of confidential information (e.g., financial information, social security numbers and other information identified as “confidential”) should be conducted using high grade encryption. Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a security program that allows users to encrypt and decrypt e-mail.

Internet

• Employees may not download software images unless there is an explicit business-related use for the material. Entertainment software, games and related downloads are specifically prohibited.
• Employees should be aware that by merely visiting a Web site, their address will be left behind, indicating at that site that they and The Company have visited it.
• The transfer of company information to a non-company Internet email account is prohibited.
• Blogging or visiting chat rooms using company resources is prohibited.

Telephone

• Personal long-distance phone calls are prohibited. Employees who have personal or confidential matters to communicate should not use company equipment to do so.

Software and Hardware

• Employees may not remove company owned resources, such as computers, laptops, printers, copiers, electronic media, flash drives, data or any hardware peripherals such as keyboards, mice, mouse pads, etc. from company premises unless they obtain written authorization using an equipment check-out form.
• Do not use or distribute copyrighted software or information without proper authorization from the copyright holder.
• Do not install any programs on a personal computer. Employees should contact the manager before making any software, hardware or configuration changes to their computer.
• Do not attach any hardware devices to the CPU (such as a flash drive or external drive), monitor, phone, keyboard, etc.
• Treat all downloaded software as if it may have viruses; any file downloaded needs to be first scanned with a virus detection program.

Social Media Policy

At The Company, we understand that social media can be a fun and rewarding way for employees to share their lives and opinions with family, friends and co-workers around the world. However, use of social media also presents certain risks and carries with it certain responsibilities. To assist employees in making responsible decisions about the use of social media, we have established these guidelines for appropriate use of social media.

This policy applies to all employees who work for The Company or one of its subsidiary companies in the United States.