Policies, Procedures, Regulations and Guidelines

These regulations and policies apply to all of the following:

• Use of the Department’s or College’s computer facilities

• Use of personal equipment connected directly or indirectly to the Department or College network, including the wireless network.

• Remote systems and services, which are accessed from or via Systems connected to the Department/College network. This includes accessing a web mail service (e.g. hotmail) from a Birkbeck Computer.

In summary, anything which can be traced back to the College is covered by the College policies and regulations.

Access to Department Computer Resources

Access to computer resources is a privilege not a right, and carries with it certain duties and obligations.

All Computer user are expected to:

• Show consideration for other users.

• Comply with College computer regulations.

• Comply with the Department computer regulations.

• Comply with the Department booking procedures where appropriate.

• Users are required to respect the copyrights of others.

• For more information on copyright see the Department copyright page

Computer access can be withdrawn if these conditions cease to be met.

Policy on root password

The department UNIX systems can divided into two groups.

The trusted systems which are part of the main UNIX cluster and have full access to the cluster file system. Only the members of the BSCSG know the root password for these systems.

The rest which have no access to the cluster file system. These systems are managed by the owner/grant holder. When a new system arrives the owner has to decide if they want to have the root password and manage it themselves, or have the system managed as part of the central cluster.

Note

It is possible if requested, to restrict access to a single user or group of users for any system in the cluster. The College has a Network Security Policy, which all system administrators are required to follow.

Why We don’t give out the root password

• Root password gives you access to any of the systems in the central UNIX cluster.

• Root can become any users.

• The UNIX cluster file systems ( includes the PC I: drive) is accessible from any cluster system. Therefor a root user can access, modify and delete anyone’s files or email.

• The root user can hide all of their actions.

• UNIX is a complex operating system some changes require modifications to several unrelated files, if you get it wrong it can take a lot of work to find what was changed, what was not and what needs to be done to fix it. For example. To change the system name involves modification to several files on more than one computer.

• For several of the system files there is only one master which is copied to the rest of the network. If you don’t make your changes to the master then they will be lost next time we push out a master update.

• A researcher (who has the root password) could make a change to improve their work without realising the problems it can cause for other users. For example. Modifying the default PATH to make it easer to use coot breaks the procedures used to check which versions of the system software have been installed and which should be updated.

Staff with the root password must be trusted

• Not to modify the system to give their own research priority.

• Not to access other users data, program files for there own research etc without the owners permission.

• Where possible respect the privacy of users files, email etc.

  Note. There occasions when it is necessary to access other users files and email. e.g. bounced email and running out of disk space.

Connecting to Departmental Network

The following conditions must be satisfied before any system can be connected to the department network.

• The equipment will be used for an appropriate purpose.

• The equipment will not cause interference to other users of the network. For example, A badly configured or faulty network interface could cause severe problems for other users.

• The required resources are available.

• These resources include but are not limited to.

  • Network addresses

  • Network capacity

  • Network cabling to the system

• The funds for any extra expenditure required.

We reserve the right to disconect any system from the department network if these conditions cease to be met.

Copyright

Software used in the Deprtment or College is copyright unless explicitly marked otherwise.

It is an offence to copy copyright materials including software without the permission of the owner of the copyright.

Only copy material protected by copyright if you have the permission of the copyright owner.

• Assume all material is protected by copyright unless explicitly told otherwise. This includes date files, programs, text, graphics, images, cartoons, sound and video files.

• Do not use any material for which there might be doubts abut its copyright status or your permission to use it.

Disaster Recovery Procedure

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance in the recovering from any disaster which might effect the functioning of the Departments computer services.

Activating the Recovery Procedure

To invoke the disaster recovery Procedure requires a meeting of the Disaster recovery committee.

Disaster Recovery committee

The committee will be composed of

the Disaster Recovery Team the Project Group Representatives the Department Chair Others as co-opted

The committee will consider

• the state of the computing systems

• the remedial actions possible

• the resources available

The committee will establish priorities and issue formal reports of progress.

Any requests for a change in priorities should only be made by a Project Group Representative to the committee.

The Disaster Recovery Committee will only meet occasionally this is to prevent the Recovery Teams time being spent in meetings when it could be better spent on restoring the computer systems.

Disaster Recovery Team (or The Team).

The disaster recovery team will consists of the BSCSG staff.The Team will also need to draw on the staff of the different project groups. There will be occasional Team meetings as needed.

Project Groups

• Each of the research and teaching groups dependent on the department constitutes a project group.

• Every Project Group will choose a person to act as its representative.

• All formal contact between the Team and Project Group will be through this group representative. The Team may request the assistance of other members of the Project Group.

• All Project Groups should perform an initial Risk Assessment and formulate a Disaster Recovery Plan.

• This Risk Assessment and Disaster Recovery Plan will be used by the Disaster Recovery committee to establish priorities and by the Team in planing work.

Acceptable use of the School’s Printer Facilities

Acceptable use of the School’s Printer Facilities

The printers are provided to support the Schools teaching, research and administration. While a small amount of personal use is acceptable this should not be abused. Activities, which are unacceptable, include:

• Producing a large number of copies of a document, which could easily be photocopied.

• Printing large and inappropriate documents on the colour printers

• Use of the printing facilities for commercial gain.

• Printing of documents or reports for non Department users.

  For example, Printing a project for a student from a different institution.

Guidelines on use and Consideration for other users

• Think before you print, do you need to print all this or can you edit the file and only print the part needed ( or head , tail or grep)

• Please don’t print *ps but use serveral print commands then we can put other urgent print jobs before some of yours

• Please don’t fill the print queues with large number of jobs and then disappear.

• A large number of print jobs can full up the spool area on the printer server and stop all printing.

• If your print job does not come out of the printer immediately please Check the following

  • Is the print job still on the queue

  • Did you send it to the right printer

  • Did you send it to a different printer than the one you checked

  • Does the printer have any paper in it

  • Is there a problem with the printer

    • Not switched on

    • Paper jam

    • Out of toner or ink

  • DON’T! print it ten more times hoping that shear force of numbers will make the system to print your file.

• The colour printers are slower than the black & white laser printers and cost more to run.

• Please only use the colour printer when you really need colour output.

• Don’t print a web page on the colour printer, unless the colour conveys important information which would be lost in black & white.

• A nice colour logo or a few highlighted words are not a good reason to use the colour printer.

• please check there is paper in the printer Paper is kept with the photocopyer in B086

• Please keep the areas around the printer tidy

Privacy & monitoring of Computer Systems

Access to, Use of and Communications on the Department of Biological Sciences’ computer systems may be monitored and/or recorded to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes.

As part of their normal operation computer systems monitor and record events occurring on them. Some of these events can be associated with a computer account (e.g. A user login in or an email being sent) whereas others are more general (e.g. a system crashing). The level, detail and amount of information recorded can often be varied to suit current requirements.

The information can be used of a number of purposes including (but are not limited to):

• Maintaining the effective operation of the systems

• Detecting and diagnosing problems

• Investigating suspected misuse or abuse of computer facilities

• Meeting obligations to third parties

• Meeting legal obligations

On occasions we may be required to pass this information onto a third party.

Users should think carefully before keeping confidential, sensitive or personal information (or anything else they would rather others not see) on the Department’s computer system.

There may be occasions when it is necessary for the system staff to access a user’s files and e-mail. These occasions include (but are not limited to):

• Investigating looping or bounced e-mail

• A file server running out of disk space

• Investigation into possible misuse or abuse of the Department’s computer resources.

On occasions it may be necessary to monitor, intercept and record network traffic.

Users requiring more privacy for their personal use of the Department’s computers might wish to consider using an alternative service. For example

• there are a services offering free web based email accounts, some of these may also encrypt the traffic between their server and the users web browser.

The requirement to monitor computer systems is not unique to the Department of Biological Sciences. Virtually all communications on the Internet is monitored to some extent, even if it is only packet counters on router interfaces.

Supported Hardware and Software

The department has adopted the policy of concentrate support on Linux, MacOSX and Microsoft.

This is intended to reduce the complexity of the department’s computer systems and thereby make them easier to use and support.

Individual grant holders and research groups are still free to purchase and support any system, however they should remember the limited support for other platforms.

Support Priorities

The following factors are considered when assigning priorities to work requests and problem reports.

• How many systems and people are effected

• Failure of the main file server would effect everyone, this would be a high priority problem.

• Profile of the service effected. Our web servers (including PPS) have a high profile and hence a high priority.

• Urgency of the work effected

• Severity of the problem

  • High priority: Failure of file server

  • Low priority: Problem which is mildly irritating or cosmetic e.g. wrong screen background pattern

• The amount of notice given in a work request. Please don’t ask us to setup a demonstration system 1 hour before you are due to give a major presentation

• Resources required and available i.e. It is quicker and easier to change a password than to backup, format and restore a disk