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Modern authentication question

Wouter Witkamp 1 Reputation point
2022-05-17T06:53:39.463+00:00

Hi all, 

Currently at our o365 tenant SMTP auth / basic auth has been disabled. This to be ahead of the october shutdown by Microsoft. 

I got a question from a user regarding an external company, they want be able to use our ATcompany adress for their SAAS software, to send mails to our users from our own domain. 

Before we would use SMTP, but i don't understand the needs for modern authentication yet. 

What are the needs for modern authentication? Will MFA / Conditional access do the job? Or does it need an Enterprise App with admin consent / Oauth token? 

Im new to this topic, would really help me out if people can give feedback, thanks in advance!

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  1. Kai Yao 37,791 Reputation points Moderator
    2022-05-18T08:43:28.06+00:00

    Hi @Wouter Witkamp

    Please refer to this link: Basic Authentication Deprecation in Exchange Online – May 2022 Update

    We are not turning off SMTP AUTH. We have turned off SMTP AUTH for millions of tenants not using it, but if SMTP AUTH is enabled in your tenant, it’s because we see usage and so we won’t touch it. We do recommend you disable it at the tenant level and re-enable it only for those user accounts that still need it.

    You can still use Basic Auth for SMTP if you would like to.

    What are the needs for modern authentication? Will MFA / Conditional access do the job? Or does it need an Enterprise App with admin consent / Oauth token?

    It may depend on how the application is working with Office 365.
    For example you may use Oauth2.
    More information can be found here:
    Authenticate an IMAP, POP or SMTP connection using OAuth
    Announcing OAuth 2.0 support for IMAP and SMTP AUTH protocols in Exchange Online

    You may need to enable modern authentication to use MFA. Conditional access is a feature to control user access with methods like enforcing MFA.
    So they are not the needs for modern authentication.

    If you have further questions or need help with how to configure the application, please consider posting in the Exchange development forum(add the office-exchange-server-dev tag to your question).

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
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