Forum Discussion
High Volume Email Account and Conditional Access
Hi all, We've set up a HVE account, and set up a Conditional Access Policy targeting this account to block sign-in to all cloud apps for any location except for the excluded IP address ranges. A...
If you're not seeing sign-in logs and Conditional Access isn't working, it's likely because the High Volume Email (HVE) account is using SMTP AUTH (Basic Authentication), which bypasses Conditional Access and doesn't show in Entra ID sign-in logs.
To secure it:
- Use modern authentication (OAuth2) where possible.
- If using SMTP AUTH is required, limit it via SMTP AUTH policies and network restrictions at the firewall level.
- Monitor with Exchange Online audit logs instead of Entra sign-in logs for SMTP AUTH activity.
Conditional Access only applies to modern auth, not legacy protocols like SMTP AUTH.
While that was true that Basic sometimes did not show properly, Authenticated SMTP does show up in logs now. Here's a screenshot of what it shows as in an Entra sign in log detail.
HVE accounts do have the be excluded from CA policies. I recently spent months converting legacy apps over to using HVEs .
