Acceptable Use Policy

Acceptable Use Policy

Authorized By: Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Purpose/Overview

The intentions for publishing an Acceptable Use Policy are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to Safire’s established culture of openness, trust, and integrity. Safire is committed to protecting its employees, partners, and the company from illegal or damaging actions by individuals, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Internet/Intranet/Extranet-related systems-including but not limited to computer equipment, software, operating systems, storage media, network accounts providing electronic mail, WWW browsing, and FTP-are the property of Safire. These systems are to be used for business purposes in serving the interests of the company, and of our clients and customers in the course of normal operations.

Effective security is a team effort involving the participation and support of every Safire employee and affiliate who deals with information and/or information systems. It is the responsibility of every computer user to know these guidelines and to conduct their activities accordingly.

Scope

This policy applies to the use of information, electronic and computing devices, and network resources to conduct Safire’s business or interact with internal networks and business systems, whether owned or leased by Safire, the employee, or a third party. This policy specifically applies to the handling of Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in accordance with NIST SP 800-171.

This policy applies to all employees, contractors, consultants, temporaries, and other workers at Safire, including all personnel affiliated with third parties.

Policy

Ignorance of this policy is not an acceptable excuse for non-compliance. All users are required to read and acknowledge this policy annually.

General Use and Ownership

• Safire’s proprietary information stored on electronic and computing devices whether owned or leased by Safire, the employee or a third party, remains the sole property of Safire. You must ensure through legal or technical means that proprietary information is protected in accordance with the Data Protection Policy .

• You have a responsibility to promptly report the theft, loss or unauthorized disclosure of Safire’s proprietary information.

• You may access, use, or share Safire’s proprietary information only to the extent it is authorized and necessary to fulfill your assigned job duties.

• You may access and use customer/client information only to the extent authorized and necessary to fulfill your assigned job duties. You may share customer/client information only with the express authorization of the customer/client and a member of the senior executive leadership team.

• Employees are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use. Individual departments are responsible for creating guidelines concerning personal use of Internet/Intranet/Extranet systems. In the absence of such policies, employees should be guided by departmental policies on personal use, and if there is any uncertainty, employees should consult their supervisor or manager.

• For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within Safire may monitor equipment, systems and network traffic at any time, per Safire’s Audit and Accountability Policy .

• Safire reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy.

• Users must utilize the organization-approved VPN when accessing company resources via public or unsecured network connections (e.g., hotels, airports, coffee shops).

• FCI and CUI may only be stored, processed, or transmitted on Safire -authorized systems and locations. Use of personal devices or personal cloud services for FCI or CUI is prohibited unless explicitly authorized in writing and configured in accordance with Safire security requirements.

Security and Proprietary Information

• All mobile and computing devices that connect to the internal network must comply with the Access Control Policy .
• System level and user level passwords must comply with the Password Protection Policy . Providing access to another individual, either deliberately or through failure to secure its access, is prohibited.
• All computing devices must be secured with a password-protected screensaver with the automatic activation feature set to 10 minutes or less. You must lock the screen or log off when the device is unattended.
• Postings by employees from a Safire email address to newsgroups should contain a disclaimer stating that the opinions expressed are strictly their own and not necessarily those of Safire, unless posting is in the course of business duties.
• Employees must use extreme caution when opening e-mail attachments received from unknown senders, which may contain malware.
• Sensitive physical documents (containing CUI or FCI) must be cleared from desks when not in use and stored in locked cabinets or drawers. Users must verify that no sensitive documents are left on printers or photocopiers.

Unacceptable Use

The following activities are, in general, prohibited. Employees may be exempted from these restrictions during the course of their legitimate job responsibilities (e.g., systems administration staff may have a need to disable the network access of a host if that host is disrupting production services). Under no circumstances is an employee of Safire authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal or international law while utilizing Safire-owned resources. The lists below are by no means exhaustive, but attempt to provide a framework for activities which fall into the category of unacceptable use.

System and Network Activities: The following activities are strictly prohibited, with no exceptions:

• Violations of the rights of any person or company protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property, or similar laws or regulations, including, but not limited to, the

installation or distribution of “pirated” or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by Safire.

• Unauthorized copying of copyrighted material including, but not limited to, digitization and distribution of photographs from magazines, books or other copyrighted sources, copyrighted music, and the installation of any copyrighted software for which Safire or the end user does not have an active license is strictly prohibited.
• Accessing data, a server or an account for any purpose other than conducting Safire’s business, even if you have authorized access, is prohibited.
• Exporting software, technical information, encryption software or technology, in violation of international or regional export control laws, is illegal. The appropriate management should be consulted prior to export of any material that is in question.
• Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (e.g., viruses, worms, Trojan horses, e-mail bombs, etc.).
• Revealing your account password to others or allowing use of your account by others. This includes family and other household members when work is being done at home.
• Using a Safire computing asset to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that is in violation of sexual harassment or hostile workplace laws in the user’s local jurisdiction.
• Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services originating from any Safire account.
• Making statements about warranty, expressly or implied, unless it is a part of normal job duties.
• Effecting security breaches or disruptions of network communication. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the employee is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the employee is not expressly authorized to access, unless these duties are within the scope of regular duties. For purposes of this section, “disruption” includes, but is not limited to, network sniffing, ping floods, packet spoofing, denial of service, and forged routing information for malicious purposes.
• Port scanning or security scanning is expressly prohibited without the CISO’s advance notification and approval.
• Executing any form of network monitoring which will intercept data not intended for the employee’s host, unless this activity is a part of the employee’s normal job/duty.
• Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account.
• Introducing honeypots, honeynets, or similar technology on Safire’s network.
• Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the employee’s host (for example, denial of service attack).
• Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, with the intent to interfere with, or disable, a user’s terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet/Intranet/Extranet.
• Providing information about, or lists of, Safire’s employees to parties outside Safire.
• Use of removable media (USB drives, external hard drives) is prohibited unless explicitly authorized and encrypted in accordance with the Media Protection Policy.
• Inputting Safire Proprietary Information, CUI, or FCI into public Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot) or unauthorized public cloud storage services (e.g., personal Dropbox/Google Drive).

Email and Communication Activities

• When using company resources to access and use the Internet, users must realize they represent the company. Whenever employees state an affiliation to the company, they must also clearly indicate that “the opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of the company”. Questions may be addressed to the IT Department.

• Sending unsolicited email messages, including the sending of “junk mail” or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material (email spam).

• Any form of harassment via email, telephone or paging, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages.

• Unauthorized use, or forging, of email header information is strictly prohibited.

• Solicitation of email for any other email address, other than that of the poster’s account, with the intent to harass or to collect replies.

• Creating or forwarding “chain letters”, “Ponzi” or other “pyramid” schemes of any type.

• Use of unsolicited email originating from within Safire’s networks of other Internet/Intranet/Extranet service providers on behalf of, or to advertise, any service hosted by Safire or connected via Safire’s network.

• Posting the same or similar non-business-related messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroups (newsgroup spam).

Blogging and Social Media

• Blogging by employees, whether using Safire’s property and systems or personal computer systems, is also subject to the terms and restrictions set forth in this Policy. Limited and occasional use of Safire’s systems to engage in blogging is acceptable, provided that it is done in a professional and responsible manner, does not otherwise violate Safire’s policy, is not detrimental to Safire’s best interests, and does not interfere with an employee’s regular work duties. Blogging from Safire’s systems is also subject to monitoring.
• Safire’s Confidential Information policy also applies to blogging. As such, Employees are prohibited from revealing any Safire confidential or proprietary information, trade secrets, CUI, FCI , or any other material covered by Safire’s Confidential Information policy when engaged in blogging. As a reminder, this prohibition extends to customer/client information as well. You expressly agree that you will immediately remove all Confidential Information from any blog, social media, forum, or other online post upon request/instruction from Safire
• Employees shall not engage in any blogging that may harm or tarnish the image, reputation and/or goodwill of Safire, any of its employees, and/or any customers/clients except where permitted by law. Employees are also prohibited from making any discriminatory, disparaging, defamatory or harassing comments when blogging or otherwise engaging in any conduct prohibited by Safire’s Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment P olicy .
• Employees may also not attribute personal statements, opinions or beliefs to Safire when engaged in blogging. If an employee is expressing his or her beliefs and/or opinions in blogs, the employee may not, expressly or implicitly, represent themselves as an employee or representative of Safire. Employees assume any and all risk associated with blogging.
• Apart from following all laws pertaining to the handling and disclosure of copyrighted or export-controlled materials, Safire’s trademarks, logos and any other Safire intellectual property may also not be used in connection with any blogging activity.

Compliance

Compliance Measurement

The policy owner will verify compliance to this policy through various methods, including but not limited to, business tool reports, internal and external audits. Oversight is provided by CISO, IT, and Compliance functions. Enforcement of this policy is coordinated through Human Resources and Executive Management.

Exceptions

Any exceptions must be approved by the Policy Owner in advance.

Non-Compliance

An employee found to have violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

Related Standards, Policies, Plans, and Procedures

• Access Control Policy
• Audit and Accountability Policy
• Data Protection Policy,
• Password Protection Policy
• Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy

Referenced Terms

CUI

Information that requires safeguarding or dissemination controls pursuant to and consistent with applicable law, regulations, and government-wide policies.

Revision History

2026-08-20 — Darren Rush

Merge pull request #2 from safire-dev/dev (16cb681)

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