As part of our on-going programme of security enhancements, we have already made some changes to the way that email is accessed. Earlier in the year we began by blocking basic authentication. This meant that users were no longer able to access their University email via mail clients/applications that rely on basic authentication (i.e. clear-text username and password) over legacy (old) protocols such as IMAP, POP or SMTP. This affected staff using outdated versions of Outlook as well as other mail clients such as Gmail, Thunderbird, native mail apps on Android and iOS, etc.
You still had continued access to your email via the portal, Office.com or by downloading the outlook app onto your mobile device from your app store.
To follow on from these previous changes; on the 7th June 2021 the smtp.stir.ac.uk mail service will no longer be available for off-campus use. This service was originally used by staff to send email from their University accounts from off-campus. We have checked our service logs and they indicate that regular users are not using the service from off-campus anymore. You should not be affected by this change but please contact the Information Centre if you are off-campus and find you are unable to send email from this date. It will continue to work for any on-campus systems that still use it.