What is happening
Microsoft is strengthening its security by withdrawing support for Basic Authentication. It will start rolling this out across all tenancies starting on 01 October 2022. This will affect how users can connect to their Exchange Online mailboxes. It is an approach many IT service/product vendors, including Google, are taking as the industry moves towards making authentication more secure.
Impact
All Exchange Online mailboxes will be affected. This will impact everyone owning or connecting to an Exchange Online personal or shared mailbox: current and retired staff, students and alums.
When Basic Authentication is withdrawn in October, users will have to connect to Exchange Online mailboxes with a client that supports what Microsoft calls ‘modern authentication’, which is more generally known as OAuth.
The latest versions of Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Gmail and Samsung Mail support OAuth. People using these email clients will not be affected.
Some older email clients may be using App Passwords as a bridge to authenticate to Exchange Online. App Passwords will no longer be supported, meaning that some users will no longer be able to access their Exchange Online mailbox using their current email client.
Action required
If a user’s current email client or operating system does not support ‘Modern Authentication’/OAuth, they must either upgrade to a version that does, or switch to using a more modern email client to access their University Exchange Online mailbox(es).
Modern Authentication is supported by the following popular email clients and operating systems (and there may be others):
- Outlook 2016 and later
- macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and later
- iOS 11 and later
- iPadOS 13.1 and later
The Native Android mail app (all versions) does not support Modern Authentication.
There is intentionally no workaround for this because the aim is to eliminate the use of outdated, insecure technology.
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Published: 22 August 2022