Date Established: -
Date Last Revised: 3/26/2012
Category: Information Technology
Responsible Office: Enterprise Infrastructure Services
Responsible Executive: Chief Information Officer
A collection of policies and procedures for Central Email such as; spam filtering, forwarding, retention etc. that do not apply to UBmail accounts powered by Google.
UB provides central email accounts primarily to employees and to select groups of students to support the teaching, learning and research mission of the university. The purpose of these policies is to:
This policy applies to all university data regardless of its medium and/or form, and to all those who handle university information (faculty, staff, students, third party contractors, and any others).
Email Filter
The processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. Most often this refers to the automatic processing of incoming messages, but the term also applies to the intervention of human intelligence in addition to anti-spam techniques, and to outgoing emails as well as those being received.
Federal e-discovery Rules
The federal court system can rule for the disclosure and production of electronically stored information used as evidence in federal civil lawsuits.
New York State Freedom of Information Laws
Also known as FOIL, governs rights of access to government records.
SPAM
The use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.
The UB central email system is used as an official channel of communication. Faculty, students, and staff are responsible for reading UB email regularly for official University communications. Those who forward their UB email to a non-UB account are responsible for managing their disk quota for the non-UB account to ensure that there is enough disk space for new email. They are also responsible for keeping their email forwarding addresses up-to-date, ensuring that UB email is being forwarded to a functioning email address. There is no mechanism for setting or updating an email forwarding address once the account has been deactivated.
The use of UB email systems is also subject to the normal requirements of legal and ethical behavior within the University community. Policies and regulations that apply to other forms of communication at the University also apply to email. Please see the Computing and Network Use Policy for more information on acceptable use of University IT resources. UB provides email systems for activities and functions supporting its mission of teaching, learning, research and discovery, and service.
UB employees need to be aware that law and policy relating to the use of state resources make it important to separate work and personal email & files. Upon termination or resignation, an employee's email account will be terminated and all information in your UB mailbox not retained by the University will be deleted.
It is recommended that UB employees obtain an email account with one of the many services available for their personal email. UB email communications may be subject to public access under NY State FOIL and federal & state e-discovery rules.
Email may contain official University correspondence as well as non-official correspondence, attachments, and forms transmitted electronically. It is important for all users to note that copies of email messages, including personal communications, may be released to the public under the New York State Freedom of Information Law. In addition, all email messages including personal email may be subject to and released in response to various government and court-ordered legal actions. New federal rules regarding discovery of electronically-stored evidence require the preservation and production/disclosure of any electronic evidence that is regularly and routinely available, including email messages, when there is an expectation of litigation.
In order to protect the privacy of third parties and to ensure that the University meets its obligations to all students under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a deceased student’s email will be provided only to law enforcement for investigative purposes, provided the request is made within the normal email retention period.
In order to protect the privacy of third parties, email belonging to deceased faculty, staff, or volunteers will be provided only to law enforcement for investigative purposes or to the individual’s immediate supervisor exclusively for the purpose of continuity of University operations, provided the request is made within the normal email retention period.
In order to manage spam proactively, all new UB central email accounts will be created with spam filtering enabled. Inbound messages will be scanned and rated, and messages rated as having an 80% or higher probability of being spam will be quarantined. Messages rated at 99% are dropped.
Note: UBmail powered by Google accounts utilize Google's SPAM filtering mechanisms.
Outgoing Email messages, originating from UB servers or forwarded from elsewhere, with a spam rating of 80% or more will be dropped (i.e., will not be sent), since the email is highly likely to be originating from a compromised or misconfigured machine on campus acting as a spam bot. This measure is being implemented to prevent UB from, becoming gray- or black- listed by ISPs, blocking delivery of all UB email to their systems.
In order to manage spam proactively, email forwarding that negatively impacts our central email servers will be disabled/removed.
In order to manage spam proactively, email forwarding that negatively impacts our central email servers will be disabled or removed.
UB retains email centrally for disaster recovery purposes alone. Deleted messages (messages in the trash/recycle bin) are retained for 7 days. Originators and recipients of email are responsible for identifying and saving documents that must be retained in order to comply with federal, state, or local laws and to meet operational, legal, audit, research, or other requirements.
Sending email with forged header information (specifically with a forged FROM line) is prohibited. The central email service will not accept email for nonexistent UBIT account names.
The Chief Information Officer or his designee will periodically review and update this policy as needed. Questions concerning this policy should be directed to the Office of the Associate VP for Information Technology.
Violations of this policy will result in appropriate disciplinary measures in accordance with University policies, applicable collective bargaining agreements, and state and federal laws.
Contact | Phone | |
---|---|---|
Associate Director of Enterprise Infrastructure Services | 716-645-3031 | lps@buffalo.edu |
Thomas R. Furlani, Interim Associate Vice President for Information Technology
3/26/2012
Date