KBI 311802 Certificate Based Authentication In Office 365

Version

Argent Advanced Technology – All Versions

Date

Monday, 6 April 2020

Summary

With many Argent customers moving to Office 365, most federal agencies are mandated to use 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) to access emails, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc

Argent cannot work with 2FA for emails

Certificate-based authentication is an alternative for third party applications to authenticate with Office 365 securely

Technical Background

N/A

Resolution

The below instructions are for Windows systems (the Argent Main Engine runs on Windows):

  1. Install and configure the certificate authorities using the below instructions from Microsoft:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/active-directory-certificate-based-authentication-get-started

  2. Install Outlook 2016 or higher on the Argent Main Engine servers (only 32-bit version of Outlook is supported)

  3. Launch Outlook and create a profile in non-cached mode

    Name it the same on all Argent Main Engines and Alert Executors, e.g., “Argent”

    Make sure the profile can send and receive email

  4. Configure Argent Main Engine and point it to the created profile (MAPI)



    Click For Full Size
  5. Go to an Alert definition and test the Alert to verify Argent is able to relay the email correctly