OIT may consider outside e-mail provider

“OIT has studied the economies and advantages of outsourcing student e-mail service and has reported to University administration regarding the results of that study,” he explained, adding that the report “does not make a recommendation, but simply lays out the options.” These options include maintaining the existing infrastructure of WebMail with additional upgrades and outsourcing to companies like Microsoft and Google, though Sather said there would be minimal financial benefits to replacing WebMail with a cloud service.

He explained that University officials are concerned that the use of third-party e-mail services might involve entrusting confidential information, such as student grades, to the care of cloud providers. Much of this information is protected from being released to third parties by laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), but if the information were sent to a cloud account, students would have no legal recourse if the information were compromised, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Sept. 30.

One benefit of having an in-house client like WebMail is that OIT knows “that the privacy of mail is being protected and not being ‘looked at,’ either by machine or person,” Sather explained. He added that cloud providers “have their own standards for such things.”

“Confidentiality is a very real concern,” USG IT chair Michael Yaroshefsky ’12 said in an e-mail. “Because the University has no agreement with Google or any other e-mail provider to maintain confidentiality of e-mail between University employees and University students, there were concerns that such communications may make it more difficult for the university to comply with FERPA regulations.”

Sather also said that having an internal e-mail service allows for the confirmation of e-mail delivery. “The University, with proper reason, can examine log (history) files and determine that a message really did make it to a specific inbox,” he explained. “Once mail leaves Princeton, we cannot guarantee that it was actually delivered.”

But Michael Chou ’10, who redirects his Princeton e-mail to Gmail, said the benefits of using third-party providers outweigh the risks.

“Linking Gmail with your Princeton address gives you the best of both worlds,” Chou explained. “You get more space and the Gmail interface — which is much better than Princeton WebMail — while still being able to send and receive from your Princeton address.” He added, “I am fairly confident that Google’s servers are more secure than Princeton’s, and either way, I do not send any sensitive information over e-mail.”

Sather said University students have had relatively few problems with cloud providers thus far. “There have been a limited number of times when mail that was believed to be sent has not reached its destination off campus,” he noted. “This could be a message mistakenly marked as spam.”

Sather added that, on some occasions, there have also been problems with “general internet access” that make the ability for e-mail to reach the cloud services “very slow or not available.”

“It is not obvious yet if, all things considered, there is a better choice than managing student e-mail internally,” Yaroshefsky said. “On the surface, it would seem like a great idea for us to let Google handle student e-mail accounts. It could save the University hundreds of thousands of dollars and be more user-friendly to students. However, making such a switch raises valid legal, logistical and privacy concerns which make the correct choice less than obvious.”

The decision is still pending, Sather said, but the changes outlined in the report are “certainly possible” should the University decide to change the current system. For now, at least, the cloud will have to remain beyond the horizon.