IT Guidelines and Policies

College of Education Information Technology Guidelines and Policies

9/23/10

1.  Web Site Development

Guidelines have been drafted and reviewed by the Faculty Council.  The guidelines are currently posted on our Internal Web Site under the College Policies heading.

The relevant guidelines and policies can be found here.

2.  Administrative Rights to Local Machines

Penn State is encouraging all units to operate local computers with the lowest level of administrative privilege consistent with performing necessary functions.  When machines with higher levels of administrative privilege are compromised by hackers, the potential for damage to the network is much greater.  For this reason the University is encouraging units to operate their machines with the least level of administrative privilege necessary.

Most users have little or no need of higher levels of administrative privilege to do their work, but there may be instances where higher levels of privilege are needed on either a temporary or more permanent basis.  The College’s default practice will be to configure all computers connecting to the Penn State network with one local user account for the use of the individual (i.e., without administrative privilege).  If an individual user wishes to have administrative privilege, a request should be completed and submitted to the Associate Dean for Research, Outreach, and Technology for review. Please note this policy option is for faculty only.

Please submit your request to the CETC help desk ticket system

The administrative guidelines and policies can be found here.

3.  Establishing Accounts on Computers

Before you were given a Penn State access account you signed an agreement to abide by the university’s  “Acceptable Use Policy” which describes prohibited activities like sending spam, trying to sell things, etc. Upon gaining access to the Penn State network, users will be required to log in, and will be reminded of their commitment to comply with University IT policies.

One aspect of acceptable use is not storing any personally identifiable information (like Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, etc).  Users will be asked to run software that will help them identify and remove such information, and you will be expected to periodically scan computers for such information.

The relevant password guidelines and policies can be found here.

The relevant acceptable use policy can be found here.