Cybersecurity Tutorial

NERSC Policy

Important Policies Concerning Computer Use at NERSC

The primary policies governing system access at NERSC are found at  As a NERSC user, you are responsible for following these policies. Following are a few policies of particular importance

Authorized Computer Use

As a reminder, here are some of the prohibited activities for accessing NERSC system:

• Illegal activities (such as fraud, embezzlement, or theft).
• Viewing, storing, or downloading sexually explicit material.
• Downloading, storing, or sharing illegal copies of material such as music or software protected by copyright or other laws. For instance, the downloading of music without the permission of the copyright holder, whether by ordinary client/server techniques such as a web browser, or by peer-to-peer techniques.
• Using software for which you do not have a legal license (You are responsible for managing your software licenses).
• Engaging in for-profit activities such as selling merchandise on a Web site.
• Gambling (including on-line casino betting).
• Attacking or launching a vulnerability scan against anyone else's computer.
• Harassment of any kind, sexual or otherwise.

In addition to these prohibitions, good network citizenship requires that you:

• Use only information and resources for which you have authorized access.
• Don't read or browse through other people's data, and don't login to any computers or accounts without authorization.
• Don't abuse shared resources, including disk space, CPU time, memory, and network bandwidth.
• Cut back on your use of any resource when asked by a NERSC administrator.

If you have any questions about prohibited activities, please contact NERSC at Security@NERSC.gov or Support@NERSC.gov.