The objective of this document is to specify the policy for how Excellent IT's clients should handle IT and email. It is important that everyone adhere to the policies as emails are the main way of communicating and they generate the personal and company image to friends, clients and suppliers. Emails also are a possible security & confidentiality threat. All clients are issued with this policy. If there is something you do not understand in this document or if anything is unclear, immediately contact Excellent IT to book a training session.

Design & Install structured cabling, in order to build an Ethernet (wired) network

Beware of email phishing. Emails appearing to come from companies you trust may actually be from criminals trying to steal your money or identity. Phishing scams use 'spoofed' (faked or hoax) emails and Web sites to trick you into providing your personal and financial information. So-called 'phishing' emails have quickly become one of the most devastating scams on the Internet.

When entering dates in the systems the international standard format of YYYYMMDD I.E. 20041207 should be adopted. This will ease sorting in date order.

All emails sent should contain a disclaimer and be spellchecked. Adequate business language (Dear Sir/Madam, Truly Yours, etc) should be used when communicating with clients and suppliers

In order to minimize loss of information emails are the preferred way for internal communications. Post its / paper notes should be avoided.

The are different email formats available such as HTML, TXT amnd RTF. Some email viewers cannot read HTML and will display the email as plain text and attach the background as a file. Also some companies IT departments will quarantine HTML emails and the recipient will actively have to call IT and ask them to release it. In these 2 latter cases emails should be sent as plain text by choosing Format -> Plain text.

Internet email is VERY easy to intercept. Never send an email containing anything you would not send in a postcard or even post in a newspaper. Confidential information (contracts, drawings, etc) should never be sent to an external email unencrypted.

As a general rule all attachments should be sent in PDF format. This will hinder editing of the files sent and the viewing of document metadata. Please see : Dangers_of_Document_Metadata.

Always utilizes state of the art Virusscan software. If however you receive a suspicious email do not open or preview it. Immediately shut down your PC and contact Excellent IT. Some viruses spoof/fake the senders’ address, so newer contact the sender of a virus even if you recognize the name. Contact Excellent IT and the email will be traced to the real sender.

To prevent viruses never install any software on your PC without liaising with Excellent IT. Never click on links such as: in emails as they might be harmful.

It is recommended to use a web browser other than Microsoft IE such as Firefox. If you use IE, always have the security setting set to High. Any websites using Active X can be added to the trusted zone, contact Excellent IT if you need this.

All Corporate emails are property of the Company and may be viewed by others. Do not use the corporate email for sensitive private/personal information.

Do not use corporate email addresses on websites or mailing lists (many websites collect email addresses and sell them causing spam or virus infections).

Always liaise with Excellent IT before connecting any personal hardware devices such as phones and Ipods to your PC. You are personally responsible for any material stored being properly licensed. The use of file sharing / torrent software might make your company liable to criminal prosecution.

Email systems have size limits that differ from 1 MB to 100MB. Attachments larger than 1MB should be zipped/compressed. For stability and performance reasons it is advisable to keep Outlook mailboxes to a maximum of around 300MB = 300.000 KB each. If you for convenience wish to keep many old emails you should archive them to the local PC by when in outlook choosing File -> Archive and choosing a folder locally (C:/) as the target. Excellent IT will be happy to assist with this if needed. All important / business critical emails should be filed/archived and backed up.

The statistics from from your website can be downloaded daily and published on a server such as \\company\userfile\IT\website\report.htm. It is recommended that personnel look at these stats once a week to pick up on any potential clients who might have looked at the site.

It is recommended that mobile phones should be set to one ring / beep when in the office in order not to distract when they are left at the desk.

Occasionally Excellent IT needs to reboot/do maintenance on office PC’s. If the user is not at their desk, and there are any open documents it is assumed that they have already been saved, and no changes will be saved. It is aimed to schedule server reboots outside office hours. Personnel are responsible for any open documents being saved when they leave their desk