Microsoft Deprecation of Basic Authentication in Exchange Online

Microsoft invests over $1 billion (USD) annually on Cyber Security research and Development. This is in support of new technology and capabilities, as well as improving their posture against existing and new threats. SSO closely monitors their updates, to understand how this protects and potentially impacts our clients.

This outreach is to share with you a specific security implementation Microsoft will be implementing on October 1st, 2022 and how this impacts the support we provide.

WHAT IS THE CHANGE AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN

On October 1st, Microsoft will deactivate Basic Authentication for Exchange Online on October 1, 2022.

Basic Authentication is an older way email, software, and web applications manage usernames and passwords to login/access the service. With email, the older authentication methods of POP, IMAP, SMTP will no longer be supported due to their inherent insecurities.

For email, several older and 3rd party email applications (on computers and mobile devices) rely on Basic Authentication. When this change is implemented, we expect several of these older and 3rd party email applications will no longer work with Microsoft email. It will continue to work with the current versions of Outlook Web, Outlook for Desktop (on Mac and PC), and the Microsoft Outlook App (for iPhones/iPads and Android).

WHAT AFFECTS DOES THIS CHANGE HAVE

As SSO is security first company, our priority is to keep you and your organization as secure as possible. When these changes take place, we will be only be supporting the authorized Microsoft applications for email support.

This means we will no longer be supporting older and 3rd part email applications such as Mac Mail (for Macs, iPhones, iPads), Thunderbird, Android email, and others like this. If you are currently using an older or 3rd party application and would like assistance transitioning to the authorized Microsoft applications, please contact us for assistance.

ADDITIONAL LINKS/INFORMATION

Please reference the links below for more information on this change:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients-and-mobile-in-exchange-online/deprecation-of-basic-authentication-exchange-online

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/basic-authentication-deprecation-in-exchange-online-may-2022/ba-p/3301866

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/new-resources-modern-authentication

For any questions and/or additional information, please contact us at hd@ssowow.com or 858-848-5776 ext 3. We are here, happy to help and look forward to speaking with you.