What is an Acceptable Use Policy?

An acceptable use policy is a set of rules that is applied by website owners and networks which restrict the ways in which the site or the network may be used.

AUP (also some times acceptable use policy) documents are written for business, universities, corporations, Internet Service Providers, schools, and Web site owners often to decrease the potential for legal action that might be taken by a user, and it is often with little prospect of enforcement.

The acceptable use policies are also integral to framework of information security polices; its common practice to ask the new members of an organization to sign an AUP before giving them access to its information systems. And for this reason, an AUP have to be clear and concise, while at the same time covering the important points about what users are, and are not, allowed to do with the IT systems within an organization. It should refer the users to the more comprehensive security policies where relevant. It also should, and notably, define sanctions which will be applied if any user breaks the AUP. Compliance with the policy should, as usual, be measured always by regular audits.