Microsoft Schools using SSO for students with BBID

Kathy Hannon

How are you handling the student with Microsoft moving to force MFA on O365? I am being told this will force students to use MFA, in October - we use the suite for students 3-12 and lower school students don't have phones. We are having a challenge with how to handle the students. How are you handling this change with students?

Alex Basiliere

@Kathy Hannon
Hello Kathy, can you link the Microsoft documentation to confirm this change is being implemented?

David Lee

I am also very interested to check out this annoucement

Kathy Hannon

@Alex Basiliere it's Modern Auth - here's the article

https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/tip/Microsoft-modern-authentication-deadline-looms-over-Exchange

our sys admin is still trying to figure out how this all fits with MFA

Brian Hoyt

@Kathy Hannon Hi, I am fairly certain you are mis-reading this news release. Microsoft forcing all M365 users to have MFA on would be a much bigger story. Microsoft is disabling Basic authenticaiton protocols like IMAP4 and POP3 because you can't enforce MFA on those protocols. Even if an account has MFA on it those protocols allow a bypass. Microsoft is enforcing the use of modern authentication. This allows organizations to use tools like conditional access in Azure AD to enforce MFA but doesn't require it.

Your students (and mine) will not be forced to activate MFA. Don't worry about that. This is the original Microsoft announcement Basic Authentication Deprecation in Exchange Online – May 2022 Update - Microsoft Tech Community and it doesn't mention MFA. The article you linked to combined the two in a confusing way.

Tracy Brown

@Kathy Hannon Brian is correct. Microsoft is simply removing basic auth and requiring the use of modern auth for connecting with Exchange Online. Modern Auth works better with MFA and conditional access than basic auth. Here is a link from Microsoft that explains the change.

Here is another link showing how you can discover where basic auth is being used in your tenant.

I hope this helps.

--tracy

Kathy Hannon

@Brian Hoyt & @Tracy Brown Thank you!