Authentication Services

Applies to: Office 365 Dedicated Plans

Topic Last Modified: 2013-01-29

Authentication is the process of determining whether a user or computer is, in fact, who or what it declares itself to be. There are several methods of authentication. Office 365 uses Active Directory authentication technologies developed by Microsoft. Optional two-factor authentication features also are available.

Your organization’s involvement is required to implement an authentication service design for Microsoft Office 365 services. The design addresses the following:

• Implementation of an Active Directory Domain Services architecture for Office 365 dedicated plans that includes:
  
  • Active Directory trust relationships between your forests (Customer Forest) and the Office 365 forest (Microsoft Managed Forest).
    
  • Use of specific authentication protocols.
    
  • Customer Forest domain controllers dedicated to servicing the authentication load generated by Office 365 services.
    
  • Implementation of DNS name resolution services.
    
• Implementation of optional Active Directory Federation Services, Active Directory Rights Management Services, and two-factor authentication features.
  

Each of these authentication technologies is described in more detail in the sections that follow.