Critical incident

uchicago: Inbound Email Issues

Affected: Office365 Email, Spam Filtering (spam.uchicago.edu), Mailing Lists (listhost.uchicago.edu)

Current status of uchicago: Operational — live uchicago status

Timeline

1. Aug 14, 2026, 13:16 UTC
   investigating
   Earlier this morning, August 14, IT Services email systems began experiencing issues receiving email from external sources. Users will be unable to receive email from external email sources and any mail sent while this issue is occurring will bounce back to the sender and need to be resent later, once the issue is resolved. The issue appears be with the University's email protection services vendor, Proofpoint and we are in contact with them and they have noted that they are experiencing an ongoing issue and are working on the problem.
2. Aug 14, 2026, 14:34 UTC
   identified
   IT Services has implemented a workaround to route inbound email while Proofpoint continues working to permanently resolve the issue. NOTE: Email sent from external sources to @uchicago.edu email addresses between approximately 6:00 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. on August 14 will most likely need to be resent by the sender. Some email systems, such as Gmail, may have held onto the email and attempt to resend it periodically, but this is not typical. We are working to apply the workaround to additional email domains, such as @lib.uchicago.edu, @psd.uchicago.edu, etc.
3. Aug 14, 2026, 15:22 UTC
   monitoring
   Proofpoint has resolved the issue on their side, and all new email appears to be flowing normally. IT Services will continue to monitor the situation through the day and remove the workaround once it's clear that Proofpoint's resolution is stable. NOTE: Email sent from external sources to @uchicago.edu email addresses between approximately 6:00 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. on August 14 will most likely need to be resent by the sender. Some email systems, such as Gmail, may have held onto the email and attempt to resend it periodically, but this is not typical.
4. Aug 14, 2026, 19:14 UTC
   resolved
   As of 1:30 p.m., the workaround IT Services put in has been removed, and email is flowing normally.

Updates as published by uchicago (original).