Re: Outsourcing Student Email - Security Concerns?

[Russ Leathe <Russ.Leathe () GORDON EDU>]

Hi Allen,



We migrate to Live@EDU last year.  We migrated users in three phases, Alumni (8,000), Students (1600), Facstaff (500).



We were an internal Exchange 2007 shop and we weighed the pro's and con's against Live@EDU and Google.  The interface 
on Live is what everyone was used to, for starters.



Other issues that made the decision easier.



1.)    Support for low vision, blind, special needs student

2.)    Support is with an actual MS person over the phone, not through e-mail

3.)    Management is  centralized and performed via the GUI - we use powershell to create accounts

4.)    Calendar  sharing over the web, texting calendar invites.

5.)    25GB storage, 10GB mailboxes

6.)    Lync, Sharepoint integration

7.)    Online MS Office apps



Overall, the users have been happy and our technical staff sleep better at night.



Upgrades have been a breeze since it is done by MS and usually over a weekend.



When there is an issue (and there have been a couple), you feel helpless because it use to be "all hands on deck" to 
resolve the issue. Now we call a support desk.  So loosing that control has been tough.

The flip side,  24/7 support, uptime, and great 24/7 technical support.  The 2 issues we ran across were resolved 
within an hour and affected about 20% of users each incident.



I hope this is helpful,



Russ



From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Allen 
Wood
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 11:05 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Outsourcing Student Email - Security Concerns?



Hello all,



I work for a small community college and we're currently running Exchange 2010 for student email.  Our VP likes the 
idea of using Google Apps for Education (or Microsoft's Live@edu) and freeing up that mail server for something else.  
I am leery of making the move and basically putting the student's Active Directory accounts in someone else's hands. I 
would think there are also possible compliance issues, but I haven't really studied that side of it yet.



Have any of you ever made either side of this argument before?  If so, would you mind sharing any info that you may 
have available that may help us decide outsourced vs. locally hosted, and maybe even Google vs. Microsoft?



Thanks in advance for any info-



Allen Wood