The Student Email service will be migrated to the Microsoft Live@edu service over the weekend of 14/15 August. At this time email will stop being delivered to all Squirrel Mail accounts and any rules and/or forwards will also stop working.  Any staff still using Squirrel Mail, who have not moved their accounts by Friday 6 August, will have an account created for them on the Staff Exchange Email system and email will then be delivered to that account.

Warwick is regularly targeted by phishing emails – attempts to gather personal information by fraudulent means. Phishing emails can generally be identified as:

• They contain no personal information relating to you i.e. they start Dear Customer
• They contain unusual and incorrect spelling and grammar
• The offer is ‘too good to be true’ – e.g. you have won a lottery you never entered.

For further information on phishing emails please see: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/servicessupport/collab/email/spam_phishing/

Examples of recent phishing emails received across campus can be found at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/servicessupport/collab/email/spam_phishing/examples/

In order to complete an upgrade, there is a requirement to re-start this server. Crocus is a complex server which  is responsible for delivering a wide range of services, including many departmental specific applications and web sites. While the re-start is taking place, the following will be unavailable:

• Home directories (File store) – home directories on Crocus will be unavailable
• Unix Email - email will not be affected unless people have scripts which run from their home directories on Crocus to pre-process their mail. Under these circumstance mail will not be lost but may be delayed. 
• Web sites – sites hosted by Crocus will be unavailable during this time
• MySQL databases (using v 3.23.41 and v 4.0.20)

If you have any questions, or concerns about the timing of this work, please contact customerservice at warwick dot ac dot uk

Warwick continues to be targeted by 'phishing' emails, emails attempting to capture personal information, as well as other unwanted emails (SPAM).  For information and advice on how to spot phishing emails and reduce the amount of SPAM you receive, please see http://go.warwick.ac.uk/email/spam_phishing

 Examples of recent phishing emails being received by the University are available at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/email/spam_phishing/examples

 If you want to report SPAM and phishing emails, please contact report.spam@warwick.ac.uk

As part of the on-going review of staff email provision, we will shortly be removing the option to change to having your mail delivered to the UNIX email system. Accounts already on the UNIX mail system will be unaffected and will continue to operate.

On 2 June and 3 June  IT Services will be moving 2 of the 4 email relays into a separate Data Centre, which will provide increased resilience to the email system. This work is not expected to have any impact on service provision, as there will only ever be 1 mail relay out of action, but the service should be considered to be ‘At Risk’ while the move takes place.

If you always forward your Warwick email onto another account,  IT Services can set up a permanent forward on the Exchange system for you. This is a more efficient method than using ‘rules’ on an email client, as your email is passed straight through from the Exchange system. If you would like IT Services to set this rule up for you, please log a call with the IT Services Service Desk.

Before setting up any email forwards, it is recommended you consider the University’s Information Security Policy with regard to data security http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/gov/informationsecurity/policies/

As you may be aware, this student service will be replaced with an outsourced service (Live@edu) during this academic year, the move is scheduled to happen on 1st August 2010.  Once this move has taken place, Squirrel Mail will be decommissioned. This means that any email you have stored there will be inaccessible and any rules and/or forwarding in place will cease to work.

To ensure that you can continue to send and receive mail, we would recommend you move your account to the Exchange Email service as soon as possible. If no response is received by 1st July 2010 your email will be moved to Exchange to ensure you can still access it once Squirrel Mail has been turned off.

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss this further, please contact Lynne Lockwood on extension 50103 or l.lockwood@warwick.ac.uk

As you may be aware, we are currently in the process of outsourcing the current Student Email service (Squirrel Mail) to Microsoft’s Live@edu service.  As a result of this, many staff have already enquired whether we will be outsourcing the Exchange/Outlook service to provide similar functionality for staff.

Outsourcing staff email is under consideration, but before any decision is made, the University wants to gather feedback from staff, consider and respond to any questions or concerns which colleagues may have, and decide whether this is an appropriate strategy to pursue.

Further to the roadshows across campus last term, frequently asked questions and answers are now available online.  If you have any further questions or comments, please contact customerservice at warwick dot ac dot uk

The existing Student Email Service (Squirrel Mail) is due to be replaced this year.  Any staff currently using this service will need to transfer to an alternative system and move any email they have stored in Squirrel Mail. Any forwarding or rules currently in place on Squirrel Mail will stop working as the system will be decommissioned. For advice on moving your account, please contact Lynne Lockwood at l dot lockwood at warwick dot ac dot uk