How to implement strong authentication for OUTLOOK "Client"?

Question

I’ve got a customer that is currently using Lotus Notes, and they’ll be migrating off Notes to Exchange + Outlook (for the email/messaging part) and SharePoint 2010 (for the documentation repository functionality of Notes). Currently their security policy mandates for strong authentication to access the email and “intranet” – and given that all that is on the Notes platform, they consider they have 2FA, as any user needs 2 things to access: the “id” (certificate) file, and a password.

The security architects want to preserve that security in the future setup. Protecting the access to SharePoint is not too hard (web app, so there are plenty of options). There is work to be done there yet, but what really worries them at the moment is the “Heavy Outlook” access… is it possible to ask for 2FA when we launch the client? Or do they have to resort to something like an internal firewall that blocks access until authentication has taken place?

Any and all ideas, no matter how “crazy” might seem, are more than welcome.

Thanks a lot

Javier

Answer 1

This depends a lot of what kind of security level the security architects in your company want, so this question is really hard to answer. But you can make Exchange 2010 with Outlook as secure as you want. Also you can secure SharePoint 2010 quite good, but again that depends on the level of security your security architects would like to see.