New policy includes network monitoringby George SpainCCIT Technical Publisher A revised MUSC Computer Use Policy (CUP) puts more emphasis on personal responsibility, advises users that their computer use may be audited or monitored, and warns them that “the confidentiality of their electronic communications cannot be guaranteed by the university.” “While some might perceive these provisions as less than collegial, they are really just an acknowledgement of what has evolved over the past several years with the technology and the law,” said Richard Gadsden, CCIT’s director of security. Gadsden and C. Frank Starmer, Ph.D., associate provost for information technology, were the main architects of the policy that was adopted by the MUSC Board of Trustees on Oct. 12, after review by the SGA and the Faculty Senate. It replaces the previous policy established back in 1996, when the Internet and the World Wide Web were still fairly new. The new CUP can be found on the Web http://www.musc.edu/ccit/cup/cup2001.html. Some highlights follow… Personal responsibility
Monitoring your computer use
One example of network monitoring can be found in the electronic medical record (EMR) process. In response to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and MUHA patient confidentiality policy, audits are conducted on a regular basis to see who’s accessing patient data, said Sharon Knowles, MUHA’s information security officer. “Right now, the audits are only being conducted on the EMR’s of employees who are also inpatients here,” Knowles said. “Employees who are patients have the same privacy rights that any other patients have,” she said. “The electronic medical record displays an excellent picture of whose record and what information was accessed using the OACIS web interface.” Consequences of policy violations
In addition, “University faculty, students, or staff who knowingly violate copyright and/or license terms (for example, by making or using an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted or licensed software product) may be personally liable for their actions.” (paragraph 3). “We spelled this out in detail because we want people to know that they
can be held accountable for their actions on the campus network,” Gadsden
said. “In general, we do not go looking for trouble, but when suspected
misuse of the network is reported, we are required to provide any relevant
evidence to the appropriate authorities.”
New version of GroupWise releasedAs of Wednesday morning a new version (6.01) of the GroupWise e-mail client has been in operation. The upgrade self-installed the first time you opened you GroupWise mail.The new version contains several enhancements along with bug fixes.
Read more about this at its Web site http://www.musc.edu/groupwise/NewGroupWise.htm.
This upgrade will not cause any e-mail loss. You didn't notice any change if you were a member of CCIT, the Digestive Disease Center, or the Institute of Psychiatry—departments whose e-mail had already been updated. The most noticeable and important change was to the “Notify” feature. “Notify” no longer is a separate program, but is built into the GroupWise e-mail client. “Notify” is launched from within the GroupWise client (if you chose to do so). If you haven’t done it already, enable “Notify” by launching Groupwise 6.01, then go under the menu items: Tools >Options >Environment, then select >Launch Notify at startup. From then on, when you start GroupWise, “Notify” will run. Important: When you close GroupWise, you also close “Notify.” If you had any problems with this process, contact the Help Desk at
792-9700.
|