Policies and Guidelines - University of Houston
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Policies and Guidelines

UH IT Cyber Security Guidelines

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security may raise the threat level from the current 'yellow' condition to either 'orange - a high threat' level, or 'red - a severe threat' level in the future. The UH-IT Division will execute a series of steps which will address each of these threat levels.

When the Homeland Security Department announces an increase to 'Orange', the IT Division will increase the level of monitoring and verify our security readiness posture. This will be accomplished by the following:

When 'threat level red' is announced, IT will immediately restrict the level of security exposure by changing how network communications are handled. This restriction will be enabled after briefly disconnecting all Internet services. This restricted processing of network traffic (safe mode) minimizes the threat exposure of all university computers by permitting only certain types of services and network communications to and from the Internet. The time that IT intends to maintain this restricted level is brief - a few hours or a day at most. This shift from 'permit all but special cases' to 'deny all but special cases' will be accomplished by: