Microsoft Making TLS 1.2 Mandatory for Office 365!

Microsoft has recently announced that it is planning to enforce TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.2 in its latest version of Office suite, i.e. 365. The company is silently deprecating the earlier versions i.e. 1.0 and 1.1 of this security. From March 1, 2018, it will become necessary for all client-server as well as browser-server combinations to use this latest or the further protocol versions in order to connect to Office 365 suite. If you don’t use TLS 1.2, you will not be able to access all the features of Office 365.

As per the current analysis of Office 365 connections to Microsoft online services, it has been revealed that only limited customers are using TLS 1.0 and 1.1. Microsoft is informing you about this change so that you can update any affected clients or servers, whichever is mandatory before the support of these earlier versions of TLS permanently disabled. In case you are using any on-premises infrastructure mainly for hybrid scenarios or ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services), ensure that these infrastructures can support both inbound as well as outbound connections that are using TLS 1.2.

The latest version of TLS is getting huge support and the earlier versions, i.e. TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.2 have started to represent a big security threat. Microsoft, the tech leader has also assured the users that these earlier versions have no known security vulnerabilities that may harm your device and data.

However, the main reason behind deprecation or the disabling of both the older versions is to completely remove the chances of future protocol downgrade attacks along with the other Transport Layer Security vulnerabilities.

TLS is a successor to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which are the protocols to ensure complete communication security over a computer network. This layer of security is still known as SSL certificates, informally. The previous versions of this network security layer’s protocol have been found vulnerable to the threats.

With the launch of TLS 1.3, you can expect more and more organizations to support TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, which is actually being recommended by this American multinational technology company. The company has also given a link to a recent white paper to provide the complete information about all the TLS 1.0 dependencies.

Lena Smith, the writer of this article has been into writing since five years. While writing, she focuses on mentioning each and every detail that can help her readers know about the latest technological changes, including Office.com/setup updates, Microsoft product launches, antivirus errors, printer errors and more.

Source: https://office.com-setupinstall.com/microsoft-making-tls-1-2-mandatory-for-office-365/

Lena Smith is the author of this article, she has written various articles on Technical issues.