Guidelines for Software, Hardware, and Systems

Requests from employees for software, hardware, or network privileges should be relative to their positions at the university and should reflect the scope of their responsibilities. Before granting any privileges to employees, the IT Department may request approval from the employee’s supervisor and/or management. Most software, hardware, and systems must receive final approval from the executive committee of the university before they are purchased and implemented.
All torrent, password-generating, and otherwise malicious software is strictly prohibited.

Maintenance of Software, Hardware, and Systems

The IT Department maintains a current inventory of all software installed on computers/networks in the university. A yearly inventory is conducted and spot checks/audits are performed periodically to ensure that illegal software has not been inadvertently or deliberately installed on university-owned computers. Software will not be installed on a network unless specifically allowed in the licensing agreement. If a software package is licensed to be operated across a network, the IT Department will make sure that any usage limits are observed and copying is disabled unless explicitly allowed under the license. The IT Department will ensure that software is not copied for use on more than one computer and that software user manuals are not copied. The IT Department will also ensure that backup copies of software are not used to run the software on additional computers.

Software Upgrades

When software upgrades are purchased, previous version and associated user manuals should be destroyed if no longer needed. Some upgrades require that previous versions be installed before the upgrade is installed, so previous versions must be maintained.