Network Group
A. Mission
The Network Group is responsible for the network backbone infrastructure and administrative computing resources. The Network Group manages and maintains network and e-mail account services for faculty staff and students, security policies, server maintenance, Internet access, and campus connectivity, spam filters, firewalls, housing network and internet access.
B. Network Policies
- Only official university business related data may reside on administrative servers.
- A user account will be locked out after three bad log-on attempts to the network
- Using FGCU’s server for the exchange of pirated software or any other illegal activity is prohibited.
- The lockout duration of the account will be 30 minutes. Users can contact Computer Support Services to reset the password.
C. Network and Email Account Policies
- Network login and Email account removals or creations must be requested through the FGCU Help Desk (590-1188), but must be made by the designated departmental contact or supervisor of the user who will receive the account.
- A two week notice is required to set up a new network/Email account. When an employee’s termination is processed, the FGCU Help Desk must be advised immediately by the designated departmental contact to disable or delete the account.
- Requests to get new network/email accounts or to delete the account will be forwarded from the FGCU Help Desk to Computer Services.
- An account assigned to an individual by the Network Group must not be used by others. The individual is responsible for the proper use of the account, including password protection. The individual must take all reasonable precautions, including password maintenance to prevent use of their account by unauthorized persons.
- A user account will be disabled if the employee is transferring to another department. The employee’s new departmental contact must request account reinstatement from the FGCU Help Desk.
- A user account will be deleted if an employee terminates his/her employment.
A request for an OPS network/Email account will be verified with the departmental contact and/or Human Resources before it is created. OPS staff can obtain a network/Email account only if they are paid by FGCU’s payroll.
- A request for a consultant or temporary staff account will be verified with the department contact and/or Purchasing before it is created.
- An OPS network/Email account, temporary staff, and/or a consultant network/Email account will expire on the last day of his/her contract. A two week notice is required to extend the account’s expiration date.
- Guest accounts can be requested by the departmental contact.
- Passwords must be at least four characters long.
- Each user is responsible for remembering his/her own password. If the user forgets his/her password, Computer Support Services can reset it.
- Password changes are effective immediately.
D. Email Policies
- The Computing Services Department of Florida Gulf Coast University will make every possible attempt to provide a full range of email functionality for the purposes of conducting University communications.
- FGCU email is for official University business only. Cooperation of faculty and staff is important in order to assist in the maintenance of an efficient email system according to the guidelines within these email policies. Cooperation is needed in making configuration changes to their Outlook email Client. Such changes include but are not limited to the creation of personal folders in Outlook and/or the creation of forms for public email use.
- Mailbox and attachment sizes
Faculty and staff will be given 100 MB of disk space on the Exchange Server for storage of their email. A warning will be sent out when the mailbox reaches 90 MB. When the 100 MB limit is reached, you will be unable to send mail, and when the 125 MB limit is reached, you will be unable to send or receive mail. Any faculty or staff member who desires additional disk space must submit their request to the Technology Committee in writing along with justification for the additional disk space required.
Faculty and staff are encouraged to create an Outlook personal folder on their local hard drive for additional email storage and organization, but need to be aware that they will assume complete responsibility for the backup of these files.
If personal folders are given a password by the user, the administrator cannot recover your personal folder file if the password is forgotten, resulting in all the data in that file becoming inaccessible. Personal folders can be created locally without a password and can be accessed by anyone who has access to your computer either by direct use of your computer or through file sharing on the network.
Faculty and staff will be limited in the size of the messages that they are allowed to send. This limit will be 30 MB. Items that will need to be referenced by multiple individuals can be accessed through Public folders (i.e., Weekly Update). These folders can be created by the email administrator specifically for that use.
Anyone who must access another employee’s email account for any reason must contact the Vice President of Administrative Services and request permission. Computing Services will NOT allow anyone but the mailbox owner to access the account and we will not redirect mail without the mailbox owner’s permission. Sharing of network and email accounts is prohibited.
- Using another person’s account for network access
You are NOT allowed to share network and email accounts. Sharing accounts is a violation of our Email Security Policy. You will be held liable for any malicious or inappropriate actions that are tracked to your account.
The following are considered to be improper usage of university email and as such are prohibited:
Chain letters - A letter generated in such a manner as to evoke the sending of an increasing number of email messages.
Harassing or hate-mail - Any threatening or abusive e-mail sent to individuals or organizations that violate university rules and regulations.
Spamming or HOAX - The transmission of email messages of which the intention is to bombard an Email server to potentially cause that server to crash.
Bombardment - Sending an email transmission whether inside or outside of the FGCU system such that it evokes others to transmit email messages which consequently bombard this university’s or any other email system.
Junk mail - Unsolicited e-mail that is not related to university business and is sent without a reasonable expectation that the recipient would welcome receiving it; and
False identification - Any actions that defraud another or misrepresent or fail to accurately identity the sender.
All Staff (A&P, USPS), All University Faculty and Staff, and All Faculty Lists
NO "All Faculty/Staff" list will be maintained for public use.
You must be a member of the permitted senders group to be able to send email to the All University Faculty and Staff, All Staff (A&P, USPS) and All Faculty lists. If a user needs to be added to the All University Faculty & Staff or All Staff (A&P, USPS) lists, they must request access through the Vice President of Administrative Services. If a user needs access to the All Faculty list, they must request access through the Provost. You are not required to be a member of the permitted senders group to send email to the All Adjunct list.
FGCU’s Computing Services department provides all faculty and staff with a hardware spam filter to help reduce the amount of junk mail being delivered to campus. Every user with an account on the spam filter will be able to control how the filter is configured individually by white-listing or black-listing specific email addresses. If spam filtering is not wanted, any user may opt out of it by connecting to their quarantine inbox and disabling spam filtering in the preferences page.
Accounts which have not been accessed in 60 days and accounts of employees who have resigned will be deleted immediately. A 30 day extension may be given after an employee’s departure by contacting the Computing Services department.
- Account Creations and Renewals
All accounts must be made by using our request form at our Helpdesk website. Only authorized departmental account managers may make these types of requests. A list of departmental account managers can be found at our website. A Dean or Director must email the Helpdesk to change the departmental account requestor. Deans and Directors are inherently account managers.
All main departments are allowed one departmental distribution list and one guest account per department.
All other accounts will be created for funded University positions only.
We do not allow Undergraduate students to use our Staff and Faculty email system. They must use the departmental guest account for network access, and use their own Eagle mail account for email correspondence. However, if they are a full time USPS or A&P employee, we will create the account. We will create accounts for graduate students if needed.
OPS, Adjunct, Contract and Intern accounts expire on 5/15, 8/15 or 12/31 and cannot be extended for more than one year. These types of accounts must have a request submitted to the Helpdesk before the expiration date to ensure that the account will remain active. It is the responsibility of the departmental account manager to manage account extensions.
FGCU supports mobile services for delivering email to mobile devices by using Exchange ActiveSync. Please contact our Helpdesk for a list of supported phones and providers.
All users are obligated to use email in a way that accurately identifies the sender and to use reasonable care to direct mail to the correct recipient. (Just like a postal box, once you mail a letter, it cannot be rescinded.)
The owner of the mailbox is the custodian of that account and is responsible for the content in that mailbox.
Forging email header information is prohibited. (Computer FRAUD law)
Email maintained on the email server for may be deleted automatically if older than six months.
Public Folders are available to assist in efficient organization of important university documents, forms, etc. for the ease and use by all.
University events should be submitted to University Relations for submission in the Weekly Update. Bulletin Board folders can be established by Computing Services for purposes such as this as the need arises. Please contact the FGCU Helpdesk to request bulletin board folders.
E. Network Printing
- Computer Services will provide each department with network printer support and installation.
- Each department will provide maintenance and supplies for their own printer(s).
- Network printing requests must be submitted to the FGCU Help Desk (590-1188).
F. Backups
- The Network Group schedules enterprise-wide backups for all of the university’s administrative servers. The following table shows the backup schedule:
Backup Type - Comments
Full - Full backups are done every Friday. These are followed by differential backups during the rest of the week.
Differential - Differential backups are done from Saturday to Thursday the following week. These follow the full backups run on Fridays.
- All backups are scheduled to start at 11:00 p.m.
- The backup software does not back up files whose names contain invalid characters (" / \ : ; | = , + * ? < >).
- Backups do not backup open files. Files must be closed in order to have a successful backup.
Note: Computer Services is not responsible for backing up or restoring any files that are saved in hard drives. If a workstation hard drive crashes and the user does not have a backup, files will be lost and will not be recovered. Backups sets are stored in a fire-proof safe every other week. They are located on campus.
G. Internet Access
The Florida Information Resource Network (FIRN), is a data communications network that was planned to serve the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Educational System for information management and data flow. This plan features separate data administration and software applications to be used within Florida’s public school system, community colleges, and universities, all of which will use a common data communications network to transfer or gain access to data. FGCU has joined Internet 2 and will be upgrading access to the new Florida Intranet at a minimum of DS3, a much greater bandwidth for faster service.
H. Dial-In Services
Computer Services provides dial-up capability using a Shiva Remote Access Switch. Guides for both PC and MAC users are located on the Intranet.
I. Computer Crimes Act
Unauthorized use of computing facilities is a crime under the Florida Computer Crimes Act (Chapter 815, Florida Statutes). Any suspected misuse of FGCU’s facilities should be reported to the Director of Computing Services.
Any violation of the CCA will result in the cancellation of your computer account, and all relevant information will be turned over to the University Police Department.
Information on the Florida Computer Crimes Act and a summary of the penalties referenced by the Act can be obtained from the Internet.
CHAPTER 815 COMPUTER-RELATED CRIMES
