What is happening? As part of the Email Improvement project, the University is transitioning to a new email security vendor, Cisco, to replace the current email threat protection tool, Proofpoint, with Cisco's Email Security (CES) solution.
What is the impact?
- This change applies to Exchange/Office 365 accounts; accounts on Mailservices will not be impacted.
- Student email accounts, not currently being scanned for SPAM, will also be scanned by the new CES solution.
- SPAM email message management will change from the current "quarantine" approach to a "tag and deliver" method:
- Quarantine
- SPAM messages are sent to the recipient's personal quarantine, not their email account.
- There the user can review and release quarantined messages and manage their blocked/safe sender lists.
- Tag and deliver
- Identified and suspected SPAM messages will be delivered to the recipient’s Junk Email folder. Recipients should now check their Junk Email folder when looking for missing or expected email messages.
- If a message is identified as SPAM in error, the recipient can move the message to their inbox.
- SPAM tags may be added to the email subject line depending on the nature of the email message, e.g., [SUSPICIOUS]. Please visit our Cisco Email Security solution page to view a list of tags and their definitions, known impacts, and other considerations.
- Quarantine
When is this change taking place? The Cisco Email Security solution will be implemented on Monday, January 25, 2021.
Why is this change taking place? There are many benefits to this change, including:
- Simplified email transit
- Consistent SPAM actions for all mailboxes
- A single place to check for all email and add/remove safe/blocked senders
- Reduced points of potential failure/email outage
- Approach is consistent with that used by many popular email systems (e.g., Gmail)
Action you may need to take after CES is implemented:
-
Safe/blocked sender lists previously created in Proofpoint will need to be recreated and managed in Outlook or Outlook Web App (OWA).
-
You will have access to your personal Proofpoint quarantine until February 28, 2021.
-
You may wish to review existing Outlook rules for SPAM, revising or deleting as appropriate.
Support resources:
- Email Improvements project page
- SPAM tags/definitions and other considerations
- How to create and manage blocked sender lists for Outlook
- Reporting misidentified SPAM
Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca.