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And we’re enabling users who are authenticated from a federated on-premises directory to be enabled for multi-factor authentication. We’re adding App Passwords for users so they can authenticate from Office desktop applications as these are not yet updated to enable multi-factor authentication. We’re also enhancing the capabilities that have been available since June. Multi-factor authentication has been available for Office 365 administrative roles since June 2013, and today we’re extending this capability to any Office 365 user.
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Only after this second authentication factor has been satisfied can a user sign in. With Multi-Factor Authentication for Office 365, users are required to acknowledge a phone call, text message, or an app notification on their smartphone after correctly entering their password. Multi-factor authentication increases the security of user logins for cloud services above and beyond just a password. This will allow organizations with these subscriptions to enable multi-factor authentication for their Office 365 users without requiring any additional purchase or subscription. Today we’re adding Multi-Factor Authentication for Office 365 to Office 365 Midsize Business, Enterprise plans, Academic plans, Nonprofit plans, and standalone Office 365 plans, including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. Paul Andrew is a technical product manager on the Office 365 team working on identity. The Office 2013 Windows client update that is mentioned in this post has updated information.
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