ECE Computer Account Administration – ECE Computer Support Group

Purpose and Use of Accounts

The ECE computing facilities are provided for the use of ECE students, faculty, and staff in support of the programs of the School. All students, faculty, and staff are responsible for seeing that these computing facilities are used in a conscientious, ethical, and lawful manner. These general policies, which can be found on the ECE Computer Usage Policies page, serve as guidelines for their use.

Computer facilities and accounts are owned by the Institute and are to be used for Institute-related activities. Computer accounts are to be used only for the purpose for which they are assigned and are not to be used for commercial purposes or non-Institute related activities.
All access to the School’s computing systems must be obtained through the Computer Support Group, by the Assistant to the Chair for Computer Support, or an authorized representative.
Accounts are for individual use only; they are not to be shared. The individual is responsible for proper use of the account, including proper password protection.
Programs and files are confidential unless they have explicitly been made available to other users. Computer Support personnel may access others’ files when necessary for the maintenance of the computing systems. When performing maintenance, every effort is made to ensure the privacy of a user’s files.
Electronic communications facilities (such as email) are considered a privilege. Fraudulent, harassing, or unlawful messages and/or materials are not to be sent or stored.
No one should deliberately attempt to degrade the performance of a computer system or to deprive authorized users of resources or access to any of the computer systems.
Loopholes in computer security systems or knowledge of a password must not be used to damage computer systems, obtain extra resources, take resources from another user, obtain access to or change another user’s files, gain access to systems, or use systems for which proper authorization has not been given. Users are prohibited from making any attempt to intercept or decode passwords or other access control information, or from making such information available to anyone.
Computer software protected by copyright is not to be copied using School facilities or used, except as permitted by law or by contract with the owner of the copyright. Software subject to licensing must be properly licensed and all license provisions (installation, use, copying, number of simultaneous users, etc.) must be strictly followed.
Academic faculty are expected to provide regular updates for their “official” ECE faculty profile and to maintain a current web page listing appropriate professional activities and responsibilities, such as current classes and ongoing research initiatives.

In summary, users may not harass or threaten other users; attempt to steal passwords, files, or other user/system information; or attempt to crash, violate the integrity of, or adversely affect the activities of any computer system. When a process is consuming excessive system resources and objectionably degrading system response, its priority may be altered without notice. If violations of these guidelines occur, the account may be disabled to protect the security and operation of the department’s computer systems.

These policies will be enforced by the Assistant to the Chair for Computer Support. Every attempt will be made to notify the affected student, staff, or faculty member prior to disabling an account. Appeals may be made in writing to the ECE School Chair.

Account Provisioning and Account Duration

Accounts are given to all ECE full time faculty and staff members. They are to be used for general research and/or instructional purposes.

ECE faculty, staff, and students are permitted to login to ECE systems using their OIT provided credentials (GT / GTED / GTAD account). These accounts are managed at https://passport.gatech.edu.

Student accounts are automatically provisioned at the beginning of each semester (see the Lab Overview for more details).
ECE faculty, staff and researchers AD (Windows) accounts are automatically provisioned once all paperwork has been completed and filed with OHR.
If you are an ECE Faculty or Staff member, or an ECE Graduate or Undergraduate student, or a Georgia Tech student enrolled in an ECE course or cross-listed course, and you need access to ECE’s Linux machines, then email help@ece.gatech.edu requesting permission. Include your GT account username and the machines or lab that you need access to. If you are a graduate student include your advisor’s name. If you are not an ECE student and need access for an ECE course in which you are enrolled, include the course number.
Access for Georgia Tech employees or students who are not affiliated with ECE (such as cross department research personnel, student assistants, etc) should be requested by an ECE faculty member by emailing help@ece.gatech.edu.
Non-Georgia Tech guest accounts can be sponsored through Passport, but for access to ECE resources the sponsor will need to email help@ece.gatech.edu.
After a student, staff, or faculty member leaves ECE permanently, any accounts assigned to that person will be removed.

System/Disk Usage

Disk quotas for accounts on ECE maintained systems will reflect an even distribution of resources for the users of the system unless other arrangements are made by the owner of the system. The owner of the system has the final word in all matters concerning disk, memory and CPU usage.

ECE maintains general use systems. On ECE’s public access systems, temporary files and directories more than two weeks old on these machines are deleted daily. Jobs are limited to one interactive or background process per login for the public Linux systems. Accounts running more than one job will lose login privileges for these machines for two weeks. For those who need to run job processes or simulations requiring large amounts of resources (CPU cycles, memory and/or large amounts of disk I/O), please email help@ece.gatech.edu to request access to the department’s PACE resources.

Educational Labs

The systems in the laboratories on the first floor of KACB and the second floor of the Van Leer Building are primarily for academic teaching purposes. No permanent accounts are available on lab computers. The following guidelines are intended to make these resources available for other research purposes when this usage does not interfere with academic needs.

During scheduled lab hours, the workstations are available primarily for academic users and secondarily for research users. To maintain the effectiveness of these systems, no background jobs are permitted during these hours.
During scheduled lab hours, usage priority is given to users in the lab. Remote processes on machines will be restricted during periods of peak usage. Peak periods are from 12 noon to 6 pm Monday through Friday during the three academic terms. Instructional accounts and faculty members are exempted from remote usage restrictions.
Usage during non-scheduled lab hours is unrestricted except for the following: (a) users must limit background jobs to one machine, and (b) background jobs must be completed or halted before scheduled lab hours begin. Habitual abusers of this policy will be notified by the Computer Support Group lab manager.
During term breaks (after finals week, before registration), the lab may be closed by the support staff for maintenance and upgrading of the resources. Faculty members should inform students that the lab may be unavailable during this period.

Access to licenses, which are being used for instructional purposes during the semester, will be restricted, if said licenses are under the control of the instructor. Additional software licenses may be restricted to be in compliance with terms set forth by software vendors.

Users violating these guidelines or others posted in the laboratory may be subject to termination of their background processes or login session.

Outside of normal lab hours, the doors to the labs will remain closed. BuzzCard access to the labs is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to all faculty, staff, ECE students and students enrolled in ECE courses for that semester.

Abuse of Account Privileges

Anyone flagrantly or repeatedly violating the policies set forth in this document may, in extreme cases, be subject to suspension or revocation of their account privileges.

Data Security

The protection of data utilized in the education, research, and business operations of the School of ECE is a major concern of the Institute. All users need to review the Institute’s Data Categorization Table.

Faculty and staff must remove outdated and obsolete sensitive data files (Category III and IV as outlined in the Data Security Classification Handbook) on a continuing basis. These files can be moved to external storage (CD, DVD, USB drive) and placed in a locked drawer or file cabinet. Data files that need to remain online should be encrypted and stored on an ECE file server. The ECE CSG must be notified of the location of all Category III and IV data. The CSG will arrange with the user to either move the data to an external storage device or encrypt the data on an ECE file server. The CSG will then securely delete the file from the users local machine and all ECE file servers.

Disclaimer

It is recognized that computer systems may fail and system security may be breached. The School of ECE and the system support staff accept no liability for the accidental loss of data or other complications caused by machine failure or account violation.

All ECE computer accounts are also subject to the Georgia Tech Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), Cyber Security Policy (CSP), and Data Privacy Policy (DPP).

Last revised on June 19, 2017.