By the end of December 2026, Microsoft will change how systems are allowed to sign in to send emails, such as trouble alerts, status reports, or notices that something needs attention. This could cause potential disruptions within condo corporations because many systems that keep residential communities operating send emails. The access control platform, the camera recorder, the elevator monitoring, the generator and leak sensors, the controllers in the mechanical room are a few examples.
What is Changing
For years, older devices and applications have sent email through Microsoft 365 using basic authentication, a simple username and password. Microsoft is retiring that method because it is easy to abuse. Basic authentication for sending mail will be disabled by default for existing tenants. Administrators will be able to turn it back on if they must, and Microsoft has said a final removal date will follow in the second half of 2027.
The practical point is simpler than the timeline. Any device still signing in the old way will, by default, stop being able to send its mail. The replacement is a modern method called OAuth, and the device or its vendor has to support it.
The Failure Mode is the Problem
When one of these systems loses its ability to send mail, there is no error message flashing on a screen. The alert simply stops arriving. The generator runs its weekly test, but the report never comes. The leak sensor detects a problem, but its warning never reaches anyone. The copier scans to email, but the scans stop landing in inboxes. The system still works. The communication doesn’t.
Where the Exposure Turns Serious
A silent gap is an operational nuisance for most notifications, but it can grow more concerning: a leak unreported over a weekend; a generator fault nobody was notified about before a power event; or a trouble signal that never reached the person who could act on it. The core life-safety function of a fire panel, its alarm and monitored connection, does not depend on Microsoft email. The convenience notifications that ride alongside it can. Knowing which systems fall into which category is the whole reason to look. The test for each one is simple: if its email went quiet tomorrow, would anyone notice and would it matter? A trouble signal someone pursues sits in a different category than a routine report that goes unread. Sorting them that way highlights where a failure might be a nuisance or a risk.
Why This Reaches the Board
Under Ontario’s Condominium Act, a condominium corporation carries real duties: it must keep adequate records, and its directors must oversee how the corporation is run. A silent communication failure reaches both. When a maintenance alert, an access log, or a monitoring report is generated and then lost, that gap is the corporation’s to account for. Directors answer for how the property operates, so a problem that begins as a technical setting becomes a board matter. The consequence lands on the corporation and its directors.
A Prior Change
A related change is arriving on much the same timeline. Exchange Web Services, the older method many applications use to reach calendar and mailbox data in Microsoft 365, begins its phased retirement in October 2026 and shuts down fully in April 2027. That one is about the systems that read and sync data. This one is about the systems that send mail. What they share is a common direction: Microsoft is retiring the legacy ways that older software connects to email and replacing them with modern, more secure methods.
What the Work Involves
Finding the exposure at a given site is methodical, but not difficult. The systems that send email can be listed, and each vendor asked one plain question: does this product still sign in with a username and password, and do you support the modern method yet? Microsoft’s own administrative tools confirm which accounts are still using the old way to send mail.
The answers sort into three piles: already modern; has an update that needs applying; or old enough that the vendor has no answer, which is the pile that needs a plan before December.
The Question Worth Asking Now
Condo budgets are set in the fall, vendors move at their own pace, and most sites have more of these quiet systems than anyone realizes. Corporations should compile a list of what systems send email at their site, and how each system signs in. The date is set. The failure is silent. The window is open, for now.
Aaron Lazare is the owner of Toronto Tech, an independent IT advisory firm working exclusively with residential condominium corporations in the GTA. He can be reached at [email protected] or torontotechguy.com.
