On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 3:38 PM Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 14/08/2024 21:28, Scott O. Bradner wrote:
> But the university values process over history (or at least the
> automaton that is doing this does)
That's a shame. I wish people and organisations had a bit more
clue that supposed efficiency is not everything. You'd a
expect universities to be good at that;-)
Bad job Harvard.
Back in the day, many Universities had email for life. It was easy because the email systems were fully in-house operations, and the world was a different place from a cybersecurity perspective.
However, in the late 2000s, most universities often outsourced their email to cloud services for low to no cost to focus on more strategic IT priorities. Fast-forward to today, those cloud services are no longer completely free. The email accounts remain free, but they charge for the storage necessary to support the hundreds of thousands of accounts involved. For a large university, that is tens of petabytes of email storage, large amounts of which are for old dormant and currently unused accounts. Then add to that the cyber security risk represented by all those dormant accounts.
So, the prudent thing to do both fiscally and from a cyber security perspective is to close all those old accounts and change policies to close accounts for departing staff, students, and faculty after a reasonable grace period. Short-term extensions are allowed, and emeritus faculty are another exception.
Unfortunately, when looked at from a Board of Regents or Trustees level, this is a no-brainer. It is all financial and cyber security risk with little to no real upside.
So, the reality is that this is just Harvard and a bunch of other universities properly minding the store based on today's financial and cybersecurity realities.
Thanks
===============================================
David Farmer Email:farmer@xxxxxxx
Networking & Telecommunication Services
Office of Information Technology
University of Minnesota
2218 University Ave SE Phone: 612-626-0815
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029 Cell: 612-812-9952
===============================================
David Farmer Email:farmer@xxxxxxx
Networking & Telecommunication Services
Office of Information Technology
University of Minnesota
2218 University Ave SE Phone: 612-626-0815
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029 Cell: 612-812-9952
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