Reasons:

1. Historically, we have resisted migrating to bMail due to ITAR restrictions. However, new anti-spam, anti-virus solutions are moving their services into the cloud. As a result we have to be firm that we cannot allow ITAR in email.

In response, we have rolled out LiquidFiles at bigfiles.ssl.berkeley.edu. This is our locally hosted service which allows users to transfer large files, or files containing sensitive data (i.e. ITAR or SBU). It also includes user security and audit logs.

2. Campus Administration is fully integrated with bConnected (bMail, bCal, etc.). They use it for email, meetings, document sharing, etc. Migrating to bMail should allow our PIs to work better with our Campus Administration counterparts. Also, campus site licensed software such as the Adobe Creative Suite are moving toward having an active CalnetID and associated bMail account for software activation and registration.

3. In September 2017, three staff email accounts had their passwords compromised (probably through phishing) and were used to send ½ million spam emails. This caused us to be listed on numerous blacklists, including those used by NASA and Orbital. Moving to bMail makes us less likely to be compromised in such a way. Google detects and responds to outbound spam faster and better.

4. Google antispam is usually better. Our current anti-spam, anti-virus software – Barracuda has been getting less effective and the company hasn’t updated their software in more than 6 months. Our current Barracuda license expires mid-January and the renewal cost is increasing.

5. SSL Webmail is terribly out-of-date. Squirrelmail is no longer being developed; not even security patches. We would need to upgrade webmail to something. bMail/Gmail has a built-in webmail client that is already familiar to many. (We may be able to provide instructions for migrating Squirrelmail contacts to bMail via a CSV file.)

6. Users get to keep their @ssl.berkeley.edu addresses. They will be forwarded to the appropriate @berkeley.edu account.

7. Users can continue to use sunearth, setimail or external mail servers. By default, we will forward their @ssl.berkeley.edu to these servers just as we do now; no interactions by the user are necessary.

8. Users can keep their old mail on mailhost1 indefinitely, as an IMAP archive server. New emails can be copied to this server as well from their bMail account.