Effective Restrictions on Internet Usage What is our responsibility? & What can I do?

St. Clair County Technology Cooperative St. Clair County Board of Education and County Commission Bryan Price – Network Support Manager Through a cooperative agreement the county commission funds the technical staff of the BOE to manage and aid in technical services for all county technologies

St. Clair County’s Network 200 Computers 17 Servers MS Windows Linux IBM – AS400 IBM – RS6000 IT Steering Committee – meets quarterly to discuss and vote on technology plans, made up of members of each dept… –Rev. Comm- Probate- Maintenance –Administration- Technology –Sheriff Dpt.-Transportation

Effective Restrictions on Internet Usage 30% of companies have terminated employees for inappropriate web use 40% Of internet use is not work related 70% of porn traffic is accessed between 9am and 5pm on work days –Source: N2H2 Secure Computing Corporation

From the EEOC website… When is an employer legally responsible for harassment by a supervisor? When is an employer legally responsible for harassment by a supervisor? An employer is always responsible for harassment by a supervisor that culminated in a tangible employment action. If the harassment did not lead to a tangible employment action, the employer is liable unless it proves that: 1) it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct any harassment; and 2) the employee unreasonably failed to complain to management or to avoid harm otherwise. The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non- employee. The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.

… all of that to say… Take reasonable action to insure that this is not even an issue. You are not obligated to provide full and free access to the internet for all employees. Be Practical – A Deputy Investigator for your county may need un-filtered access for his line of work.

Our Responsibility If we choose to provide internet access, we have a responsibility to provide a useable and safe internet access to our employees, while protecting ourselves as employers from litigation This can be accomplished internally (by your technical support team) or externally (by contracting these services) Protect your county’s computers from malicious activities –Five primary steps to safe internet usage Regular Operating System Updates Regular Updates of Virus Protection software Spam and filtering Firewall – blocking unnecessary websites Disable or password protect shared drives

Bandwidth Management Bandwidth is the speed of your internet connection. –Activities that use your bandwidth… Instant Messaging Streaming Audio & Video Surfing the Net Downloading programs (screen savers, pictures, backgrounds, etc.) Each of these activities can have Professional and Personal uses, your job is to manage each!

Develop a Network Use Policy Having an up-to-date practical network / internet use policy in place, will clearly define the boundaries to your employees! –You can find an example on our website at and then click on left hand tab labeled “IT Presentation”

Don’t just build it and forget it… As technologies change daily you need to stay abreast of the current threats. One year ago our network concerns were… Windows Updates, Antivirus, and Firewalls Today we have added Spam, Spy ware, Add ware, and Network Intrusion

References … CIPA Website (Child Internet Protection Act) St. Clair County website The End