Microsoft employees in China have been instructed to use iPhones to authenticate when logging into the company’s internal systems, and from September the company will be banned from using Android smartphones as multi-factor authentication devices.
This creates a situation where you need an Apple device even though your staff uses Windows PCs…
The move is part of the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative, which was first announced late last year.
Satya Nadella [and other senior execs] We’ve been thinking hard about how to anticipate and adapt to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. We’ve carefully considered what we’re seeing across Microsoft and what we’re hearing from our customers, governments, and partners to identify the biggest opportunities to impact the future of security. As a result, we’ve committed to adding three specific areas of engineering advancements to our efforts to continuously improve the security built into our products and platforms:
We are focused on 1. Transforming software development, 2. Implementing new identity protections, and 3. Accelerating vulnerability response. These advancements are what we call the Secure Future Initiative.
Microsoft requires employees to log into work systems using their smartphones and two Microsoft apps for multi-factor authentication. Bloomberg Staff in China have reportedly been told that going forward, the apps will only be able to run on iPhones.
Microsoft will soon require its China-based employees to use only Apple devices to verify their identity when logging into work computers and phones, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. The move, part of Microsoft’s global “Secure Future Initiative,” affects hundreds of employees in mainland China and aims to ensure all employees use the Microsoft Authenticator password manager and Identity Pass app.
The concerns reflect uncertainty about the security of Chinese-made hardware and local app stores. Staff who don’t own an iPhone will be provided with an iPhone 15.
Perhaps the company should also ban the use of its “Recall AI” feature if it is ever re-released, which was released in May as the flagship new feature for the company’s new AI-powered PCs but was quickly condemned by security experts and then indefinitely postponed.
Photo by Ed Hardie on Unsplash
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