These Terms of Service are subject to modification to reflect necessary changes within the STFC Cloud services. We will provide you with notification of any changes by email and by advertising these changes on our alternative communications channels such as Slack and Yammer. If you do not agree to the changes made to these conditions then you should discontinue use of the STFC Cloud Service.

Please ensure you read and fully understand these Terms of Service. You should not continue use of the STFC Cloud if you do not agree to the Terms of Service laid out below.

If you have any questions about these Terms of Service then please contact cloud-support@stfc.ac.uk.

Terms of Service

You agree to:

• Comply with Organisational Information Security Policy particularly regarding the Roles and Responsibilities of System Administrators together with familiarising yourself with the supporting policy framework available at Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)  and https://community.jisc.ac.uk/library/acceptable-use-policy  (or for STFC Staff at https://ukri.sharepoint.com/sites/thesource-stfc/SitePages/Information-Security-and-You.aspx )

• Respond to Security patching or other change notifications and instructions issued by the Cloud Operations Group within the timescales specified in the message.

• Report any suspected or actual security incident or other misuse of the VM immediately to cloud-support@stfc.ac.uk and must not attempt to remedy or investigate yourself.

• With respect to any software you install you must ensure that all applicable license and terms and conditions of use are met.

• Inform the Cloud Service Manager immediately if you can no longer abide by the existing or updated Terms of Service.

• Credentials applicable to the VM (such as X509 host certificate and Kerberos private keys) MUST be obtained through the Cloud Support Team. You MUST apply and maintain appropriate protection to prevent exposure or misuse for all such credentials and NOT export private keys or take any other action which would prejudice credential re-use in future VM instances.

You agree not to:

• Disable or otherwise modify or degrade the configuration of installed system monitoring and management tools including but not limited to that of rsyslog, pakiti, ssh, yum and auto-updating without written authorisation from the Cloud Service Manager.

• Change, delete or alter in any way the STFC Cloud root admin keys.

• Use the service in any way related to providing any commercial service or running a private business.

• Not to store data of a personal, confidential or sensitive nature within the service, which is provided for scientific use only.

• Use the service to store, process or manipulate any medical information or data.

• Use the service for illegal purposes.

• Infringe copyright material or other intellectual property rights.

• Undertake activities that may impact the performance of other projects and services using the STFC Cloud, such as running network sniffer tools

You accept that:

• Whilst best effort is made to provide a stable platform, VMs or other services may be subject to interruption and/or data loss at any time without notice.

• We reserve the right to immediately delete any VM or service that fails to comply with the Terms of Service, without prior notification.

• The STFC Cloud does not hold backups. You are responsible for the provision of any backups that you require.

• You can be held liable for any consequences of your failure to abide by these conditions of use including, but not limited to, the possible immediate termination of your VM without notice, reporting to your organisational management and, if thought to be appropriate, necessary law enforcement agencies.

• We reserve the right and ability to withdraw full or partial service/s or make any changes necessary to maintain the good operation of STFC Cloud services.

• It may be necessary for us to assess your fair use of the service and ask you to make changes to your operations if they are found to be in excess of the expected use case.

We will:

• Notify you of any changes to the Terms of Service via email.

• Provide a continuous service as far as we reasonably can with the understanding that it will be be necessary to schedule maintenance intervals and downtime of some or all services. That there will also be periods where some or all services are unavailable due to unexpected failures.

• Protect the security and privacy of the data we hold about you as described in our STFC Cloud Privacy Policy.

• Not acquire intellectual property rights over your software or data.

• Advertise any scheduled service interventions no later than 1 working week before they commence via email.

• Respond promptly to any comments, complaints, requests or issues submitted to the STFC Cloud Support Team email address (mailto:cloud-support@stfc.ac.uk)