Before a hosted website can be made publicly available, it must comply with the following guidelines.

Eligibility for this Service

This service is available to occupants of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the Morgridge Institute for Research.
This service is not available to host individual/personal websites for students, faculty, or staff.

Responsible Use

All websites must have a designated, responsible faculty member as well as a point of contact responsible for maintenance and updates.

You are required to:

• Follow the Regent Policy Document 25-3 (formerly 97-2) Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources which covers:
1. Acceptable and Unacceptable Uses of Information Technology Resources
2. Other Limitations on Use of Information Technology Resources
3. Failure to Comply with Information Technology Resource Policies
• Protect the privacy and confidentiality of student, patient, employee and other institutional information, as required by FERPA and HIPAA.
• Inform DiscoverIT if you intend to handle any restricted data as defined in https://policy.wisc.edu/library/UW-515. We may not be able to host your website.
• Comply with all other applicable University policies, as well as State and Federal laws, including Copyright Law (http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/)

Inappropriate Use Policy

We reserve the right to remove a website or application if the website or application compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of University or Morgridge data or information systems; violates University policies or laws that govern the use of University data; or performs a function that is inappropriate for a non-restricted data environment. Examples of inappropriate use of this service include, but are not limited to:

• Security issues resulting from software flaws
• Site neglect and failure to apply security patches
• Spam or other inappropriate commercial activity
• Publication or collection of information inappropriate for a public facing web server such as credit card numbers, protected health information, social security numbers, or FERPA protected information.
• Failure to comply with UW IT Security Baselines as outlined under Application development security (Departmental IT Security Baseline - UW–⁠Madison Information Technology (wisc.edu))

Compliance

It is your responsibility to comply with Restricted Data Security Standards. If your application stores, processes, transmits, handles, or otherwise accesses restricted data as defined by UW-Madison IT Security, and DiscoverIT is not notified, DiscoverIT will take appropriate action to enforce compliance. If any hosted website does not comply with UW IT Security Baseline (Dept IT Security Baseline), DiscoverIT will assess the severity of the security issues. Based on that severity, DiscoverIT will either shut down the site immediately or determine deadlines for remediation. 

Division of Responsibilities

DiscoverIT is responsible for:

• maintaining a stable environment for application development and web access. DiscoverIT will strive to maintain the availability of the services at all times. In the event of an outage, DiscoverIT staff members will resolve the issue promptly and provide appropriate information to you via available channels. Performing bi-annual (every 6 months) security scans.

You are responsible for:

• all of the content of your site(s) and all web application development, including testing and troubleshooting.
• maintaining who has edit or admin access to your site(s). When a person leaves your group and no longer needs edit or administrative access to your site, you will promptly remove his or her access.
• promptly replying to DiscoverIT audits. (sites are audited for security every 6 months)

Backups

The web hosting service utilizes DiscoverIT’s backup service to protect data and recover it if needed. We maintain nightly backups going back 30 days for all website data and databases hosted on our servers. Upon request, any hosted website can be packaged up and provided to the responsible faculty member in order to host on resources outside of DiscoverIT. 

Support Policy

Support requests for Web Hosting Service are primarily handled via email to service@discovery.wisc.edu during business hours.

Infrastructure Maintenance

Maintenance and upgrades to our platforms are conducted during regularly scheduled maintenance windows. This service is not recommended for sites that cannot accommodate infrequently scheduled maintenance outages or sites that require a highly customized hosting environment (i.e. specialized software installation, server restarts to pick up configuration changes). The Web Hosting environment is robust enough to support many of UW-Madison's high profile websites. In some cases, however, a dedicated server hosted on the DoIT Platform may be more appropriate.

Cancellation

You can contact us at any time to cancel service. Questions/comments on web hosting? Send email to service@discovery.wisc.edu.