Mail / Calendar
Gulu opposes the 100% Microsoft cloud solution adopted by UNIGE and wishes to move away from it in favor of open-source solutions that are more respectful of privacy and federal and cantonal legislation. However, free, local solutions that better guarantee confidentiality do exist (notably protonmail, infomaniak, etc.), but they have not been subject to detailed examination.
Gulu is asking the Rectorate to carry out a genuine feasibility study of this transition in order to ascertain the real costs, advantages, and... possible disadvantages.
Disadvantages of the Microsoft solution
The current solution does not respect data confidentiality, or does so poorly. We can only trust the company that claims to respect anonymity, but in the absence of open source code, it is impossible to confirm this information.
Furthermore, there are several reasons to believe that these promises are false.
At the end of 2022, German schools banned Outlook 365 for these reasons (Microsoft 365 banned in German schools over privacy concerns, local copy).
Infomaniak solution
Infomaniak, founded in 1994 and based in Carouge, is subject to federal and cantonal legislation. In addition to numerous internet and cloud services, it offers a comprehensive email and calendar service.
To our knowledge, it has not been contacted to make a personalized offer for UNIGE. In January 2016, Infomaniak managed more than 200,000 domain names and, in 2022, had nearly 200 employees. Infomaniak also offers a social and environmental charter.
https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite/service-mail
Protonmail solution
Proton Mail (formerly ProtonMail) is an encrypted web-based email service created in 2013 by Jason Stockman, Andy Yen, and Wei Sun. Jason and Andy met at CERN.
This email service stands out for its automatic end-to-end encryption, which does not require the user to have any knowledge of cryptography techniques. The service is therefore just as easy to use, while guaranteeing a very high level of confidentiality.
Proton Mail is managed by Proton Technologies AG, a company based in Plan-les-Ouates, in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland. Its servers are located in two locations in Switzerland, outside the jurisdiction of the United States and the European Union.
The service has been open to everyone since March 2016. In January 2017, it had more than two million registered users, and more than ten million in December 2018.
Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_Mail