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?

  • And the authenticator is configurable and they can enforce some device security like not rooted, bootloader locked, storage encryption is on through the Intune work profile. If you work on a bank, you don’t want the 2FA to even live on a device where the user gives root access to random apps that could extract the keys (although at this point come on you can probably afford Yubikeys).

    As a user, not a fan, but as an IT department it makes complete sense.

    • You’re thinking of Intune and the Company Portal app. That’s where the device enforcement comes into play. Authenticator can be installed on any system regardless of its state and their enforcement policies.