It has been a long time coming, but we finally have the confirmation, and testing, to prove that Outlook supports multi-factor authentication with Office 365. This is fantastic news, because multi-factor authentication is an important part of keeping your information secure over the wire, and in the cloud.
Office 365 has supported multi-factor authentication with Azure and other services, but it took longer for Outlook and the rest of the Office suite to support Microsoft’s modern authentication platform (Active Directory Authentication Library or ADAL).
Multi-factor authentication provides additional security by requiring two pieces of information (usually a password and code), instead of just a password. Passwords can be cached, stolen, guessed, or broken with a brute force attack. By requiring a second authentication code, it increases the difficulty for hackers to get the information necessary to access your corporate data.
This article gives a brief overview of ADAL, and although the article is about iOS and Android devices, the concepts are general and apply to Outlook across all platforms.
If you use Exchange Online with Office 365 you should work with PEI to increase your organization’s security by adding ADFS, or setting up multi-factor authentication for Outlook.
Here is an article from Microsoft describing, in detail, the multi-factor authentication support for Outlook and Office 365.
Let us help you secure the high-business-impact data in your employees’ email, and help keep your organization’s important information more secure.
Allison Sousa, PEI
