Applications, such as OneDrive, are convenient but must be used carefully to prevent the legal, monetary, and reputational consequences of exposing sensitive or confidential information through the use of these or other services provided by entities outside our university.  There are a few rules that must be adhered to if we are to allow the use of these applications.

1. As always, follow the provisions of the GSW Computer and Network Acceptable Use Policy.
2. Microsoft OneDrive is the official file sharing platform for Georgia Southwestern State University. Other third-party file sharing platforms such as Google Drive should not be used for official GSW business.
3. Never use OneDrive, nor any other outside entity’s applications (not GSW) to share, store, transfer, or otherwise handle confidential personal information such as bank account and payment card account numbers, Social Security numbers, health records, logins (user names), and passwords, etc. In addition, such information should never be sent through e-mail.
4. Never use OneDrive, nor any other outside entity’s applications (not GSW) to share, store, transfer, or otherwise handle personal information such as ID numbers, student records, student grades, contact lists, unless the document is encrypted, such as with MS Word encryption.
5. Be careful who you give permission to access your data on OneDrive. For example, if you are using OneDrive to share documents with students, be sure to update the access privileges to the documents every semester.
6. Anything uploaded to OneDrive may no longer be exclusively your intellectual property. In other words, Microsoft maintains a right to use whatever you upload to their servers.  Please be advised and aware of the following "Microsoft Services Agreement" statement.

• “To the extent necessary to provide the Services to you and others… you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content, for example, to make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat, display, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the Services.”

These rules will help to ensure the security of the university’s information and the individual’s information.  The burden of information security is on all of us.  Share information carefully.  If you have questions about the acceptable use of these applications, please contact the IIT Department.

Updated 11/2/2023