What Microsoft are changing
Microsoft are removing the ability to use Basic authentication in Exchange Online for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), POP, IMAP, Remote PowerShell, Exchange Web Services (EWS), Offline Address Book (OAB), Outlook for Windows, and Mac.
Microsoft are also disabling SMTP AUTH in all tenants in which it's not being used.
This decision requires customers to move from apps that use basic authentication to apps that use Modern authentication.
What is Modern authentication?
Modern authentication (OAuth 2.0 token-based authorization) has many benefits and improvements that help mitigate the issues in basic authentication. For example, OAuth access tokens have a limited usable lifetime, and are specific to the applications and resources for which they are issued, so they cannot be reused. Enabling and enforcing multifactor authentication (MFA) is also simple with Modern authentication.
In September 2022, Microsoft announced there will be one final opportunity to postpone this change. Tenants will be allowed to re-enable a protocol once between October 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022. Any protocol exceptions or re-enabled protocols will be turned off early in January 2023, with no possibility of further use. See the full announcement at Basic Authentication Deprecation in Exchange Online – September 2022 Update
Next Steps
The Access Profile R11 software, specifically R11.8 onwards supports connecting to email hosted on Exchange Web Services (EWS) using ‘OAuth’ authentication. When enabled, the user will have to log in to their email account using a web page hosted by their email provider. This web page will appear automatically and may use a simple username and password, or it may use other technologies, such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), depending on how their email account has been configured by their provider. We recommend you be on the latest current version of Access Profile (R11.9).
We strongly recommend that you reconfigure your Access Profile software to use Oauth by October the 1st to ensure continued email functionality of your Recruitment CRM.
Your options:
Option 1: Recommended
You reconfigure your Access Profile software to use Oauth by October the 1st to ensure continued email functionality of your Recruitment CRM. Please see instructions below.
Option 2:
You do not reconfigure Access Profile, speak to Microsoft for the one time change to re-enable a protocol then from that re enablement time until December 31st, plan in your change to Oauth. You may experience loss of email functionality whilst awaiting the protocol to be re-enabled by Microsoft.
If you do not currently use Profile R11.8 onwards we recommend you Speak to Microsoft for the one time change to re-enable a protocol until December 31st and speak to your Customer Success Manager or Account Manager about an urgent Profile upgrade or migration (on premise or onto the Cloud service).
A move to Imap/SMTP may be a short-term option but there is a loss of functionality (Loss of calendar and task synchronisations).
If you are on the cloud service, you automatically are placed on the latest current version and are Oauth compliant already and you need only change your settings to comply.
Instructions on how your System Admin can configure your Access Profile software can be seen below:
Menu (System Admin)
General Maintenance.
Email Settings.
Changing Template from Office 365 to Office 365 (OAuth).
Once this has been saved and closed, we would recommend users to log out and back into the software for this to apply to the users Profile session. When the user then logs back in they will have a prompt to login to Office 365 using OAuth. Once they have logged in successfully, they should not be prompted the next time.