MS365 MS Authenticator App Cloud Backups

[visibleman]

Hi all,

I have tried contacting MS over this but i keep getting thrown around departments with support not really knowing what the correct answer is so, a quick one for those that manage MS365 tenants - i ideally want to enable cloud backups but it's seems a personal Microsoft account is required for recovery and to enable the option.

I'm assuming you can't but, can you get away with a single "company" personal account and use that on all MS authenticator devices as the recovery account?
Or, do you have to sign every user up with their own personal MS account (on top of their 365 account) for recovery - which seems to be the daftest idea?

Alternatively, can you use other third-party MFA/2FA apps (Authy, password managers etc) instead of MS Authenticator?
Did quickly try with Keeper but it didn't seem to like the QR code

Cheers

 

[visibleman]

@GaryTheSnail - Much appreciated for that and yup, a third-party app seems to be the better solution as i've yet to work out how to do backups without a personal MS account attached in Authenticator - just a shame someone already rolled it out, with users already enrolled, without thinking much about when Sally loses her phone

 

[visibleman]

I've kept away from MS Authenticator for this reason. If I was you I would get them transferred over if you are looking after it.

If people lose their devices, you need a backup plan otherwise people just won't be able to get into accounts - and that's a big problem.

That is what is being discussed now along with getting users to add a backup MFA authenticator (SMS etc) in case - worst case we can reset MFA on individual basis but i can see some users not liking having to re-enroll.
Luckily, this isn't a MSP/MSSP scenario but it's still a headache for a SMB.