Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

01. Purpose & Scope of Applicability

This Acceptable Use Policy ("Policy" or "AUP") defines the mandatory rules and security standards governing access to and usage of the Software as a Service, cloud translation pipelines, customer web portals, and communications infrastructure (collectively, the "Service") provided by Cogential IT, LLC ("Cogential IT", "we", "us", or "our").

By accessing our website or utilizing our integration infrastructure, you ("User" or "Customer") agree to adhere to the provisions set forth herein. Cogential IT may amend this Policy periodically by publishing an updated version on our website.

02. Prohibited Content & Illegal Activities

You may not use, or encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others to use, the Service for any unlawful, fraudulent, infringing, or harmful purpose. Prohibited activities include:

• Unlawful Activity: Engaging in any transaction, transmission, or commerce that violates applicable local, state, federal, or international laws, trade sanctions, or export control regulations.
• Infringing Materials: Transmitting, storing, or processing data, images, or documents that misappropriate or infringe upon third-party copyrights, patents, trademarks, or proprietary trade secrets.
• Malicious Code: Introducing viruses, Trojan horses, worms, ransomware, time bombs, keyloggers, or other harmful computer software designed to damage, disrupt, intercept, or expropriate any system or data.
• Defamatory or Abusive Content: Transmitting defamatory, obscene, harassing, or unlawfully invasive materials through support channels, web portals, or document transmission notes.

03. System Security & Network Integrity

You may not attempt to compromise the security, availability, or operational integrity of any computer, server, database, network, or communication system operated by Cogential IT (each, a "System"). Specifically prohibited actions include:

• Unauthorized Access: Accessing or attempting to access systems, user accounts, databases, or trading partner queues without explicit authorization.
• Uncoordinated Penetration Testing: Conducting automated vulnerability scans, port scans, security probing, or penetration tests against Cogential IT's production infrastructure without prior written approval and coordination with our security operations team.
• Interception & Tampering: Monitoring, sniffing, or intercepting data traffic, functional acknowledgments, or transmission payloads not intended for your account.
• Authentication Bypass: Attempting to circumvent, modify, or disable multi-factor authentication, API keys, certificate validation, or session management safeguards.

04. B2B EDI & Communication Protocol Protections

As an enterprise B2B integration and EDI SaaS platform, Cogential IT's infrastructure processes mission-critical commercial transaction sets (ANSI ASC X12, UN/EDIFACT, XML, JSON). Users and integrated trading systems must observe the following protocol rules:

• No Malformed Envelope Flooding: You may not transmit synthetically corrupt, deliberately malformed, or infinite-looping interchange envelopes (e.g., recursive ISA/GS/ST segments, circular batch loops, or file bombs) designed to exhaust parser memory or CPU resources.
• No Fraudulent Transaction Sets: You may not generate or transmit spoofed, falsified, or unauthorized commercial transaction sets (including, but not limited to, fraudulent 850 Purchase Orders, synthetic 810 Invoices, or falsified 856 Advance Ship Notices) through our translation engines or communication pipelines.
• Certificate & Key Hygiene: Customers connecting via AS2, SFTP, or FTPS are responsible for maintaining valid, uncompromised cryptographic certificates and private keys. Compromised certificates must be reported immediately to Cogential IT for revocation.

05. API Rate Limits & Resource Fairness

To ensure multi-tenant platform reliability and prevent resource starvation, Cogential IT enforces fair-use thresholds and rate limits across our web endpoints, RESTful APIs, and transaction gateways:

• Contracted TPS Compliance: Customer automated integration connectors must adhere to the contracted Transactions Per Second (TPS) and API call frequencies defined in their applicable Statement of Work or service documentation.
• No Excessive Polling: Automated scripts or customer middleware must not flood customer portal endpoints with high-frequency, unthrottled status polling requests where event webhooks or asynchronous notifications are available.
• Automated Throttling: Cogential IT reserves the right to automatically throttle, rate-limit, or temporarily queue incoming traffic that significantly exceeds contracted ceilings until normal transaction flow resumes.

06. Proprietary Maps & Intellectual Property Protection

All proprietary translation maps, data transformation logic, trading partner specification guides, schema definitions, custom scripting algorithms, and integration workflows developed by Cogential IT represent valuable trade secrets and proprietary intellectual property:

• No Reverse-Engineering: You may not reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or derive source code from any proprietary software components or translation engines.
• No Automated Scraping: You may not deploy automated bots, spiders, or web crawlers to scrape, aggregate, or extract EDI mapping specifications, partner profiles, or schema documentation from our platforms.
• Confidentiality of Mapping Architectures: Proprietary mapping specifications provided to Customer during implementation are for Customer's internal integration use only and may not be distributed or disclosed to third-party integration competitors.

07. Monitoring, Enforcement & 10-Day Notice and Cure Period

Cogential IT reserves the right, but does not assume the obligation, to monitor system telemetry, connection logs, and transaction queue health to maintain platform security and enforce this Policy.

Immediate Emergency Action: Notwithstanding the cure period above, if a violation poses an immediate threat to system stability, platform security, other customers' data, or violates applicable law, Cogential IT reserves the right to immediately isolate, throttle, or suspend the offending endpoint, credentials, or traffic stream.

Cogential IT may cooperate with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies in investigating alleged criminal or malicious conduct by providing relevant network telemetry and logs in accordance with lawful subpoenas.

To report an alleged AUP violation or security concern, please contact our security desk: