Using Microsoft Emails ? Act now before you lose access to your emails by the 1st of October 2022

In September 2021,?Microsoft announced that they will begin to Disable Basic Authentication and enable Modern Authentication for all Microsoft online services including M365. For those of you who would like to know the difference:

Basic Authentication is when the application provides a username and password with each request. These credentials are often stored or preserved on the devices, transmitted insecurely and are prone to security risks and vulnerabilities.

Modern Authentication is an enhanced authentication method provided by Microsoft which is more secure and supports multi factor authentication (MFA).?

Since the beginning of July 2022, we've noticed Microsoft starting to roll out these changes on some of our clients' M365 tenants.

Below are a few known challenges you may face when moving clients and apps from Basic Authentication to Modern Authentication.?

1. Earlier versions of email clients (E.g., Outlook 2013, 2010, 2007) and older versions of mobile email clients (Apple /Android ) will not support Modern authentication.

? Unsupported email client versions will continue to prompt for credentials.?

? Reconfiguration of email accounts will be required for accounts configured with Basic Authentication, even on supported email clients.?

2. Protocols such as POP, IMAP and Exchange ActiveSync configured with Basic Authentication will experience connectivity issues.

• It is important to note that email configurations with POP protocol will strictly not be supported by Microsoft. Read more on :

3. App passwords will be phased out and eventually cease to work.

? Any app passwords from Microsoft configured to be used by any application will cease to work.

To ensure you can continue to connect to Microsoft email services such as Exchange Online / M365 once the change has been made on the 1st of October 2022, we’d suggest you investigate the impact and act immediately. A few tips from us are:?

1. Avoid using legacy protocols such as POP and IMAP for email client configurations and reconfigure accounts to Exchange ActiveSync with modern authentication.

2. Start using updated versions of email clients that supports Modern Authentication (E.g., Outlook 2019 or updated M365 apps).

3. Use username and password along with Multi Factor Authentication to sign into applications instead of using app passwords.

?You could learn more about the depreciation of Basic authentication on: