Security continues to be a concern with cloud-based e-mail hosting services. Most recently, a slew of universities have raised this question around Google’s e-mail service, Gmail.

The University of California has banned its 30,000 staff and faculty from using hosted Gmail and even scrapped plans for a university-wide Gmail service after some faculty expressed concerns. According to InformationWeek, UC Davis officials have even noted that “outsourcing e-mail may not be in compliance with the University of California Electronic Communications Policy.”

Yale University also halted its plans to switch to Google Apps for Education as its email provider, also because of security issues related to the change.

Security is the same problem facing all organizations as they consider hosted email options. The handiness of syncing data is a compelling lure, but most organizations (and universities) can’t afford that convenience at the cost of compromising security.

The good news is, there are other options. Products, like SYNCING.NET, are often preferred over hosting services because they offer far more security and reliability than the cloud. For more on using SYNCING.NET to sync your Outlook files, click here.