02/27/2020 - Basic Authentication Retirement - Updated Info

As previously communicated in MC191153, beginning October 13, 2020, we will retire Basic Authentication for EWS, EAS, IMAP, POP and RPS to access Exchange Online. Note: this change does not impact SMTP AUTH.

We have published an updated blog with more information about this change - Basic Auth and Exchange Online – February 2020 Update

There are several actions that you and/or your users can take to avoid service disruptions on client applications, and we describe them below and in the blog. If no action is taken, client applications using Basic Authentication for EWS may be unable to connect after October 13, 2020.

Any application using OAuth 2.0 and connecting using any of these protocols, will continue to work without change or interruption. 

[What do I need to do to prepare for this change?] 

You have several options on how to prepare for the retirement of Basic Authentication.

• You can start updating the client applications your users are using to versions that support OAuth 2.0 today. For mobile device access, there are several email apps available that support Modern Authentication, but we recommend switching to the Outlook app for iOS and Android as we believe it provides the best overall experience for your M365 connected users. For desktop/laptop access, we encourage the use of the latest versions of Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac. All Outlook versions including, or newer than, Outlook 2013 fully support OAuth 2.0.
• If you have written your own code using these protocols, you will need to update your code to use OAuth 2.0 instead of Basic Authentication, you can reach out to us on stack overflow with the tag exchange-basicauth if you need some help.
• If you or your users are using a 3rd party application, which uses these protocols, you will either need to:
• reach out to the 3rd party app developer who supplied this application to update it to support OAuth 2.0 authentication

-or-

• assist your users to switch to an application that’s built using OAuth 2.0

We have made a report that will help you identify any impacted users and client applications in your organization available to all tenants. The blog has details about using the report.

Please review the Blog to learn more about this retirement.