An AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) for private networks defines proper usage behaviors as well as unacceptable behaviors and their consequences. Learn how to create (or improve upon) your network AUP.
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: n/a
Here's How:
- Establish clear owners for the policy (one individual or one group). Owners maintain responsibility for content but do not necessarily enforce the policy.
- Give notice to the entire network community that policy creation (or revision) is underway. Establish a contact point for collecting feedback.
- Collect one or more model AUP documents to use as examples.
- Collect and categorize past incidents of controversial intranet network use within organizational memory.
- Create a rough outline of your AUP document based on community feedback, past network incidents, and sample documents from other organizations.
- Make sure the outline includes the key intranet network policy issues: use of email, bulletin board postings, abuse of network resources, and netiquette.
- If your network is connected to the Internet, be sure to include coverage of personal Internet use in the outline.
- If your network has an open Web publishing model, include intranet content ownership, roles, and responsibilities in the outline.
- Draft the complete network AUP document from the outline. Spell out the consequences of non-compliance clearly. Be honest about any monitoring (active and passive) that may be occurring.
- Publish the draft for the entire organization to read and comment upon.
- Conduct training sessions to help raise awareness of key policies: for example, password management and handling of confidential information or viruses.
- Revise the draft document based on feedback and publish again to the organization.
- Establish a periodic update process for future revisions of the document.
Tips:
- Encourage honesty as the best policy.
- Over time, identify and reward role models within the organization, but make the award criteria objective to avoid the appearance of favoritism.
