Modern Authentication -How to get ready

Microsoft will be switching off the legacy authentication methods for Exchange Online and other Microsoft cloud services from October. This has been a long time coming, but with attacks becoming more common, it is essential that Microsoft 365 users move towards MFA and Modern Authentication.

We note that is also essential when moving to MFA that you ensure users complete the sign up and are set to enforced as it is known that hackers are scanning for incomplete accounts.

What and who will be affected by the change?

The change in authentication will affect older Exchange Online clients using Outlook versions before Outlook 2016. Outlook 2013 requires registry key changes to switch to MMA. See Microsoft Article.

Modern Authentication will NOT work with Outlook versions pre 2013 and for clients not wishing to update to a later version, we suggest using Outlook Web Access. https://outlook.office.com/

The change will also affect users of non Microsoft Mail clients on Mobile Devices. It is recommended to use the Microsoft Mail client with Organisation Controls.

Copiers and other devices

Some organisations may need to set up different authentication policies to support specific needs. For example accessing mailboxes via basic authentication for copier use. This may be done using PowerShell.

Modern Authentication Settings

You can check your organisation settings through PowerShell, or from the Org Settings, Services, then Modern Authentication from the menu.

Get-OrganizationConfig | Format-Table Name,OAuth* -Auto
Modern Authentication
The modern auth settings