Exchange Online

Microsoft has teamed up with Apple to improve the security of Exchange Online accounts on iOS and macOS devices. In upcoming iOS and macOS updates, users who connected a Microsoft Exchange mailbox in Apple’s Mail app with Basic authentication will be automatically migrated to the more secure OAuth 2.0-based Modern authentication. Apple introduced support for…

Microsoft is getting ready to drop support for Basic Authentication in its Exchange Online e-mail service. The company is reminding customers that it will begin to permanently disable this feature for select protocols in its multi-tenant service worldwide starting October 1, 2022. Essentially, Basic Authentication means that an application provides a user name and password…

At Microsoft Ignite 2019, the Exchange product group announced the public preview of a set of REST-based PowerShell cmdlets to replace some of the most popular (and in performance terms, most painful) traditional cmdlets. The new cmdlets are more reliable and robust and run 2-4 times faster than the older Remote PowerShell-based cmdlets (your mileage will vary). All good stuff.

Microsoft has announced new security capabilities for Exchange Online customers. The company has finally added support for SMTP MTA Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS) to its Exchange Online service that will use Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption to secure emails and prevent man-in-the-middle or downgrade attacks. As a reminder, Microsoft unveiled its plans to launch MTA-STS…

One of the most important infrastructure features Microsoft released with the recent Windows Server 2022 is HTTP/3. Since hitting the ‘General Availability’ milestone this past September, the Windows Server team has partnered with the Microsoft 365 team in starting a phased upgrade of the front-end Exchange Online servers with Windows Server 2022. Microsoft started with…

According to Microsoft, 90% of security threats start from malicious email. And while it would be nice to think that customers using Exchange Online Protection (EOP) should always receive the highest level of protection, the reality isn’t quite so simple. EOP is a complex service. It provides a lot of granular configuration options and the…

Removing Puzzlement Last month I reported my puzzlement about Microsoft’s announcement of priority accounts. I couldn’t figure out what value these accounts brought to the table, especially as they were targeted solely at tenants with more than 10,000 accounts with more than 50 active Exchange Online users. My report was based on details in a…

Reducing the time that security tokens remain valid negatively affects the end-user experience. CAE is designed to address the problem.

Brain Fails to Understand Microsoft I know I must be missing something in Microsoft’s cunning plan to make priority accounts available in Microsoft 365. It must be a basic point that I have overlooked, some simple need that has remained unanswered since the introduction of Office 365 in June 2011. But I can’t make head…

Welcome to 48 Hours of Free Technical Content The annual Microsoft Ignite conference for IT Professionals was originally planned to run in New Orleans starting today. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Microsoft decided not to run in-person events through June 2021, and consequently Ignite 2020 is now a 48-hour online event run over three days…