SecSign ID: Outlook on the Web (OWA)

Outlook on the Web (formerly known as OWA) provides a convenient personal management option for Emails, Calendar, Tasks and more. By adding SecSign ID Two-Factor Authentication the login is protected from hacker attacks while offering a convenient login experience for the user.

This article gives an overview of securing your OWA Login with two-factor authentication. For a detailed tutorial on how to integrate two-factor authentication with your OWA Login, have a look at the plugin tutorial.

Questions? Feel free to get in touch with us if you need help setting up your SecSign ID plugin or to request a plugin for a not yet supported environment.

With the SecSign ID Two-Factor Authentication the user can log in to OWA in just one convenient and quick step – without inconvenient and complex codes.
To login the user simply needs to provide user credentials like he is used to, and select the displayed symbol in his mobile app – that’s it. Next level security with minimal complexity.

If required you can choose mobile or Email OTP (one-time passwords) as alternative authentication option.

With SecSign enrollment of your users is quick and convenient for both the user and the administrator.

You have several options to enroll your users for 2FA with SecSign. Most commonly, the 2FA ID should be identical to the Windows user name (for example sAMAccountName or userPrincipalName), and only successfully authenticated (user name and password) users should be able to create a 2FA account.
SecSign offers several options to achieve a default 2FA activation and link of the 2FA with the AD user. The two most popular are described below.
With Schema Extension to add a 2FA attribute to the user in the Active Directory, or without Schema Extension and read-only access from the SecSign ID Server.

For both options the enrollment procedure can either proceed via the Custom ID App or a custom landing page for the users to enroll.

An overview on how the Active Directory can be integrated with you 2FA setup is available here.

Windows Login: Prerequisites

The SecSign ID OWA plugin looks up the SecSign ID user name of a Windows user in the Active Directory of the Windows domain. If the user is not yet associated with an ID, he is prompted to create one either manually, or by being automatically redirected to the onboarding website. The following pre-requisites need to be fulfilled:

• The server on which OWA is installed must be member of a Windows domain and
• Active Directory Configuration

In some cases the Active Directory needs to be connected with the SecSign ID On-premise server. To realize the following situations a connection must be established:

• If the SecSign ID should match the Windows user name. This can be realized during the enrollment with the Active Directory.
• If the SecSign ID should not match the Windows user name. This can be realized both with and without Active Directory schema extension. With an Active Directory Schema Extension the plugin receives the ID from the AD. If no Active Directory Schema Extension is set up, the plugin can store the users ID.
• If the 2FA should only be activated for specific user groups or IP ranges. This setting can either be activated in the plugin or in the Active Directory. The Active Directory needs to be connected to the on-premise server if the settings are defined via the AD. A connection is also required if selective 2FA should be centrally activated for several plugins at once.

Install the plugin

On the Exchange Server (we used Exchange Server 2016 in this example), start the SecSign-OWA-Setup.exe file.

Login using two-factor authentication

The two-factor authentication is ready to use.
We also offer Desktop apps for the two-factor authentication.

For more information about the individual Windows Plugins select your user case below.