Would you personally do this on your network?

[robjduk]

Morning Edugeek(ers),

Looking for some professional opinions from the community on my current conundrum...

 

My situation is this...

-We have a third party till system for our student canteen.

-The school would like to use an option where if a student gets low on credit, the parent is informed by email.

-The company in charge of this have run into an issue where their @btconnect email account is blocked by our ISP (the ISP is run for education only and have no personal issue with them blocking it).

-The company have asked if the school will provide an email address for them to use as it will get through the ISP filters.

 

Sounds fair enough so far right?...

-The company will run this through "Windows Live Mail".

-The reason for the above is they use some third party email software to "manipulate" the data before it goes out which modern mail software like Outlook and 365 block. (I assume for good reason).

 

Now I know I can give them an email account and this will work however the network manager side of me is screaming not to comply with a company who use such dated software. My fear is if this is their approach to providing a modern system then what is their approach to security? I realise a domain user account credentials won't get anyone far but to me these tills seem a good entry point should someone want to cause my network some grief and am very hesitant to proceed.

 

Do you think I am worrying about nothing or would you flinch when you hear a large multinational company recommend using windows live mail?

 

All opinions very welcome.

Thanks

[Cazale]

Why do they need to use your ISP to send mail? Isn't the simplest answer to tell them route e-mail through their own ISP's SMTP server?

[robjduk]

All SMTP traffic is filtered through and that is whats being blocked. Only official sch.uk addresses and 365 is allowed via the connection. They have it water tight.

[Joanne]

you won't be giving them a domain account though... just an e-mail address?

[robyholmes]

Does an Office 365 account connect to Windows Live Mail? A notice on the dashboard currently says support for Outlook 2007 is being dropped, wouldn't be surprised if WLM is the same.