Office of Information Technology plans to implement additional email security protocols

Effective Jan. 5, 2025, Ohio University will discontinue the practice of granting exceptions for third parties that send email messages on behalf of the University that do not comply with OHIO’s security standards.

This change will reduce the volume of unsolicited and sometimes harmful email messages received by OHIO email account holders. Improving our protections against email scams and phishing attacks and reducing the volume of unwanted spam will save time and resources while also aligning OHIO’s practice with industry standards.   

If your planning unit or organization at the University is using a system or service outside Ohio University to send email from an address ending in @ohio.edu, then you could be impacted by the upcoming change. This will also impact a limited number of employees who use outside services such as Gmail to send university email messages. Once the new protocols are in place, email messages from non-compliant email senders will be much more likely to be marked as spam by the recipient’s email provider. 

OHIO IT has prepared this resource that includes additional guidance about the actions staff should take directly with vendors.

OHIO planning units and organizations who have previously requested exceptions for external senders should take action to ensure those senders comply with the new sender authentication protocols. The Office of Information Technology will continue to communicate updates on these changes in the coming months. If you have questions or need more information, please reach out to the IT Service Desk at servicedesk@ohio.edu or by calling 740-593-1222.