Web Policy
General Policy
This Policy applies to all instances where web technology is used and applies to all staff and students who publish information on any of the University's web servers.
This Policy sits under the Brunel Acceptable Computer Use Policy (BACUP) and the counterpart Policies of JANET.
When publishing information no member of staff or student should act in any way that could endanger the good name or reputation of the University or provide material which is inappropriate for publication by the University.
Every page, whether personal or official, will conform with the requirements of appropriate legislation including, but not limited to, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
Creation and Maintenance
Homepage and entry-point
The URL for the University's external web site homepage is http://www.brunel.ac.uk . The URL for the internal homepage is http://intranet.brunel.ac.uk. The internal homepage will be the default startup and "home" page on browsers supported and provided in public-domain workareas.
Architecture and taxonomy
The general taxonomy of pages and clusters of pages will have the structure of a pyramid, with the homepage at the apex.
Vanity domain names
The University does not generally permit domain names other than www.brunel.ac.uk ("vanity domain names") to be registered against its address space.
Editorial Responsibilities
AdvertisingThe University does not generally permit any advertising of a commercial nature or advertisements for external organisations on its web pages. Any advertisement approved by the Director of External Affairs must comply with both JANET Acceptable Use and the Code of Practice for Advertisers issued by the Advertising Standards Authority, which requires that all advertisements should be "legal, decent, truthful and honest".
Editorial control
Editorial control of the University's external and internal websites will lie within Publications Division of External Relations.
Style and format
Each page created or maintained on any University website, whether official or personal, will conform to current guidelines as contained in the University's House Style Manual and to current legislation, in particular but not limited to the requirements of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act.
Responsibility of authors
Authorship of web page carries with it all the intellectual property rights of published work in other media; it also carries all the same responsibilities.
Each School/Department/Centre/Unit has a web co-ordinator appointed by the Head who is responsible on a day-to-day basis for the official pages of the Department, and for ensuring their compliance with this policy.
It is the responsibility of the author of any official Web page to ensure that, on departure from the University's service, he/she turns over ownership of the appropriate files to a successor or, in the absence of a clearly-defined successor, to the Web co-ordinator for the School/Department/Centre/Unit, and to take all reasonable steps to inform those who may have created links to these pages.
Records management
All web documents created and published on the University's web servers are University records and should be managed accordingly.
Personal pages
The responsibility in terms of authorship and editing of a personal page lies entirely with the user whose username appears in the identifying root directory. Each personal page must carry a disclaimer stating the content is representative of the user and does not purport to be representative of Brunel University. Personal pages may not be used for placing and distribution of advertisements for commercial or external organisations, or contain any logo, crest or any other mark which may imply any representative status of that page with respect to Brunel University or to any group, company or other body. Each personal page will contain a notice of termination of availability during the final six months of the registration period for any student, during any period of notice following the resignation of a member of staff of the University, and during the final six months before the retirement of any member of staff of the University.
Linking to external websites
It is currently the policy of Brunel University only to include links from its website to selected bona fide academic-related sites and organisations with whom the University collaborates in its research and teaching.
Technical Policy
Externally visible web servers
Explicit authorisation must be received from the Director of the Computing Centre for any web server which is to have access from beyond the brunel.ac.uk domain, and such a server may be subject to regular or impromptu security audits by or on behalf of the Computing Centre. In order to aid such audits, the owner of such a server will maintain audit trails of all installations, patching and amendments on the server, and of all security reviews carried out internally by the owner. In addition, the owner will document the internal scrutiny policy with respect to the server and its contents. These audit trails and documents will be made available to the Computing Centre on request.
Common gateway interfaces
CGI scripts (programs run on a web server using data supplied by clients) are prime sources of breaches of network security. Policy regarding the use of such scripts must therefore acknowledge the paramount importance of network security.
Internal CGI server
In order to meet the teaching and learning needs of the University, and to provide a safe environment for development and testing, an internal CGI server is provided to run users' scripts. There is no access to this server from beyond the Brunel network.
Other web servers
If any other web server within the University has been authorised with access permitted from beyond the brunel.ac.uk domain, the server's owner has total responsibility for the security review and acceptance of any CGI scripts or other active content operated on that server. The reasonable suspicion of the implication of such a server in any breach of security will be sufficient for the Computer Centre to revoke the authorisation for that server to operate with the University.
Hosting external pages
The University cannot host web pages for external bodies, whether on official or personal pages.
Access
The University reserves the right to grant, deny or restrict access to particular external websites from within the University network, (including ResNet) and to change the access status of any such site at anytime and without the requirement of notice. The University has no liability for any loss, damage or other inconvenience arising out of any such decision regarding access to any external website. Authority for decision-making lies with the Director of the Computer Centre.
