Smarter Retention in Microsoft 365: A Step Toward Cleaner, More Relevant Data - Coming soon

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Anyone who has worked with SharePoint management knows that data governance is a cornerstone of digital productivity, especially in large organizations where information can accumulate rapidly. Today, retention policies in Microsoft 365 allow administrators to manage data based on creation or modification dates. However, in my experience, this approach is not always sufficient. Files that haven’t been accessed in years may still linger in OneDrive or SharePoint, cluttering storage, slowing down search, and diluting the relevance of AI-powered tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot. A new feature in Microsoft Purview Retention Policies, expected this winter, promises to enhance Data Lifecycle Management. This upcoming setting will enable policies to identify files that have remained untouched for a specified period and automatically flag them for deletion or archival. This enhancement is particularly valuable for organizations leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot. By removing outdated or irreleva...

Microsoft has started to disable Basic Authentication (affecting Teams and Exchange Online)

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 Microsoft is serious about removing the Basic Authentication protocols from their services. The change was announced back in 2019, but has been delayed a couple of times. Earlier this fall Microsoft announced there would be on further delays, and that preparations for the change should be made.

Earlier this week I was notified about the coming change to my tenant through the Admin Message Center. 14 days from now, basic authentication will no longer be available to me: 

"14 days from today we're going to turn off Basic Authentication for POP3, IMAP4, Remote PowerShell, Exchange Web Services, Offline Address Book, MAPI, RPC and Exchange ActiveSync protocol in your tenant, and will also disable SMTP AUTH completely. Note: Based on our telemetry, no users in your tenant are currently using Basic Authentication with those protocols and so we expect there to be no impact to you."

This coming change can have a major impact on many organizations. As a consultant I am engaged in multiple companies facing the challenge of preparing for this change. It might seem trivial, but most organization have over time implemented many services that are using basic authentication without being aware of them. The best way of preparing for this is by starting to go through your sign-in logs in Azure AD and identify any user who use basic Authentication. Some of the things I have noticed are using basic authentication are: Many services reading calendar information (like switchboard integrations), printer services, old mobile devices (often up to date, but wrong configuration), Microsoft Teams Rooms not set up for modern authentication, 3rd party and self developed applications.

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