Technical Tip: Support for alternate authentication methods to communicate with Microsoft exchange server from FortiGate
| Description | This article describes FortiGate's support for alternative authentication methods when connecting to Microsoft Exchange servers. |
| Scope | FortiGate. |
| Solution | FortiGate currently supports basic authentication for SMTP when sending email alerts and notifications. Since Microsoft is going to deprecate Basic Authentication in Exchange Online (Deprecation of Basic authentication in Exchange Online), configuring Microsoft’s SMTP servers, such as smtp.office365.com, is no longer supported.
As an alternative, users can configure FortiGate to use the default Fortinet SMTP server notification.fortinet.net for system notifications and alert emails. This provides a supported method of delivery without requiring modern authentication.
CLI commands to configure the default email server (fortinet-notifications.com). config system email-server set server "fortinet-notifications.com" set reply-to "admin@fortinet.com" <--- This option has been removed from v7.4.4. set source-ip 0.0.0.0 <----- This is an important field to set (the source IP that is used to send out the email traffic). set port 465 set security smtps end
Fortinet continuously evaluates support for new authentication standards. Any future enhancements, including the adoption of Modern Authentication, will be announced in the release notes of upcoming FortiOS firmware versions. Users are advised to review release documentation when upgrading to stay informed about protocol and feature support. |
