Acceptable Use

1. General

Under the provisions of the Information Resources Management Act, information resources are strategic assets of the State of Texas that must be managed as valuable state resources, thus this procedure is established to:

• ensure compliance with applicable statutes, regulations, and mandates regarding the management of information resources;

• establish prudent and acceptable practices regarding the use of information resources

• educate individuals who may use information resources with respect to their responsibilities associated with such use.

2. Applicability

This procedure applies to all University information resources. The purpose of the implementation of this procedure is to provide a set of measures that will mitigate information security risks associated with acceptable use of University information resources. The intended audience for this procedure includes, but is not limited to, all information resources owners, system administrators, and users of University information resources.

3. Definitions

• Confidential Information: information that is excepted from disclosure requirements under the provisions of applicable state or federal law, e.g., the Texas Public Information Act.

• Information Resources (IR): the procedures, equipment, and software that are designed, employed, operated, and maintained to collect, record, process, store, retrieve, display, and transmit information or data.

• Mission Critical Information: information that is defined by the University or information resource owner to be essential to the continued performance of the mission of the University or department. Unavailability of such information would result in more than an inconvenience. An event causing the unavailability of mission critical information would result in consequences such as significant financial loss, institutional embarrassment, and failure to comply with regulations or legal obligations, or closure of the University or department.

4. Procedures

The procedures determining acceptable use of University information resources are addressed in the following rules and procedures:

Information Security Standards Procedure; Authorized Software,
Information Security Standards Procedure; Incident Management,
Information Security Standards Procedure; Intranet/Internet Use,
Information Security Standards Procedure; Network Access,
Information Security Standards Procedure; Privacy
Information Security Standards Procedure; Security Monitoring,