this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Can I refuse MS Authenticator? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 months ago by Martin@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
262 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So my company decided to migrate office suite and email etc to Microsoft365. Whatever. But for 2FA login they decided to disable the option to choose "any authenticator" and force Microsoft Authenticator on the (private) phones of both employees and volunteers. Is there any valid reason why they would do this, like it's demonstrably safer? Or is this a battle I can pick to shield myself a little from MS?

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[โ€“] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I work for an MSP servicing 5k users all of whom I force to use M$ Auth app. Because it is the best Authenticator on the market, their company is paying for it, and because I look at the sign in logs for 3-4 different organizations every day to see literal hundreds of foreign sign-in attempts that fail due to M$ MFA. Yeah fuck monopolistic megacorps but understand when they provide an actual good product that is safe to use and actively protects you as an individual better than anything else out there.

All that said, the most likely reason is that they don't want to make a document explaining how to set up MFA for each of the dozen+ apps out there and they certainly don't want to talk to users who don't know what they are doing with which ever app their kid set up for them

I'm sure you know what you're doing better than 80% of the other employees in your office in this regard but I can tell you from experience, when one person gets their way, everyone wants theirs too.

[โ€“] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You left out two things:

  1. It doesn't change anything for the company if they allow the normal TOTP protocol in MS Authenticator. People who don't care will use it. People who care can use other authenticator apps.
  2. The reason companies insist on MS Authenticator is because it reports the employee's location.
[โ€“] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

  1. It doesn't change anything for the company with exception to billable IT time used when the authenticator confuses users which is already high with only one authenticator.

  2. It doesn't report location, Entra login reports location regardless of authentication method used.

[โ€“] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)
  1. Why should users care about the company's billables, first of all. Secondly, it's a red herring because there's nothing compelling them to offer support for 3rd party authenticators or even mention them. It's just a flip switch in the settings. Savvy users will try a 3rd party first anyway.
  2. Potayto, potato. The location info comes from and including Authenticator. What is the point of fetching location in a TOTP generator if not to check up on it?
[โ€“] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

  1. The company makes the rules under which you are employed. If you don't like it, legislate against it or find another employer. Also, like I said, there are no 3rd party authenticators that are more secure with entra ID.

  2. Like I said, M$ auth literally does not report location while authenticating. It only pulls location requests when signing in through the app to create the authentication token and even then it is not a requirement. Entra pulls location using your IP address on the device you are signing in with.