IT Usage and Email Policy

Policy brief & purpose

Our corporate email usage policy helps employees, consultants, business partners and contractors (collectively referred to as ‘employees’ in this document) use their allocated company email addresses appropriately. Email is essential to our everyday jobs. We want to ensure that our employees understand the limitations of using their corporate email accounts.

Our goal is to protect our confidential data from breaches and safeguard our reputation and technological property.

Scope

This policy applies to all employees, consultants, contractors, vendors and partners who are assigned (or given access to) a corporate email. This email may be assigned to an individual (e.g. employeename@bidsolutions.com) or department (e.g. training@bidsolutions.com)

Policy elements

Corporate emails are powerful tools that help employees and business partners in their jobs. Employees and Partners should use their company email primarily for work-related purposes.

Antivirus

It is mandatory that all machines and devices that you use to access your bid solutions email have up to date virus and malware protection installed that is monitoring in real time and quarantines any suspected threats.

Inappropriate use of company email

Our employees and partners represent our company whenever they use their corporate email address.

They must not:

Sign up for illegal, unreliable, disreputable or suspect websites and services.
Send unauthorised marketing content or solicitation emails.
Register for a competitor’s services unless authorised.
Send insulting or discriminatory messages and content.
Intentionally spam other people’s emails, including their co-workers.

Bid Solutions reserves the right to monitor and archive emails and email accounts.

Appropriate use of corporate email

Employees are allowed to use their corporate email for work-related purposes without limitations. For example, employees can use their email to:

Communicate with current or prospective customers and partners.
Log in to purchased software they have legitimate access to.
Give their email address to people they meet at conferences, career fairs or other corporate events for business purposes.
Sign up for newsletters, platforms and other online services that will help them with their jobs or professional growth.

Personal use

Employees are requested not to use their email for personal reasons.
Employees must adhere to this policy at all times, in addition to our confidentiality and data protection guidelines.

Email security

Email is often the medium of hacker attacks, confidentiality breaches, viruses and other malware. These issues can compromise our reputation, legality and security of our equipment.

Employees and Partners must:

Select strong passwords with at least eight characters (capital and lower-case letters, symbols and numbers) without using personal information (e.g. birthdays.)
Remember passwords instead of writing them down and keep them secret.
Change their email password every three months.

Also, employees should always be vigilant to catch emails that carry malware or phishing attempts. We instruct employees and partners to:

Avoid opening attachments and clicking on links when content is not adequately explained (e.g. “Watch this video, it’s amazing.”)
Be suspicious of clickbait titles.
Check email and names of unknown senders to ensure they are legitimate.
Look for inconsistencies or style red flags (e.g. grammar mistakes, capital letters, excessive number of exclamation marks.)

IF YOU ARE NOT 100% certain that an email you have received is safe, DO NOT OPEN IT. If you do suspect you have opened an email that contains a virus, you must immediately notify Martin Smith on martin_smith@bidsolutions.com. Please ensure you immediately disconnect the machine you accessed it on from any live network connection (wired or Wi-Fi or cellular network).

Email signature

I fully understand and agree to comply with the Bid Solutions IT Usage and Email Policy: