By fall 2010, all N.C. State students will be using a G-mail account.  However, during the migration, phishing attempts have increased and are much harder to detect.

According to the Google Apps @ N.C. State website, the benefits of this migration are numerous.  There are benefits to students, such as more storage space and ìworld classî spam and virus protection.  G-mail has more than 7 gigabytes of e-mail storage per account.  With the G-mail migration, students will keep the same [email protected] e-mail address. 

Google Apps @ N.C. State also differs from G-mail in that students will never see advertisements in the account. 

Also, the University as a whole will see many benefits from this migration.  One such benefit is a cost savings of approximately $61,000.  As well, Google Apps will provide more collaborative tools and modern systems than what was previously used. 

According to Tim Gurganus, IT security officer with the Office of Information Technology, with the G-mail software, it will be harder to detect phishing attempts.

“In the past, we detect when that’s happening, but with the migration it’s tough. We’re going to have to retool to detect a compromised account. Google has provided some rudimentary tools for that,” said Gurganus.

Gurganus says phishing attempts are frequent in University’s e-mail system.

“I suspect every student gets one in a semester,” said Gurganus.  “[Phishers] seem to know when the semester starts.”

There are certain things to beware of to prevent phishing attacks.

“I would tell students to be suspicious of any e-mail that asks for your username and password.  No maintenance we do requires that we know your password,” said Gurganus.

All incoming freshmen will have a University G-mail account by the start of the fall semester.  As of Wednesday evening, just over 28,000 accounts had been migrated to G-mail.