A couple of weeks ago Microsoft released the rebranded Acompli email app as Outlook. The app is available on iOS and Android and it seems to be pretty popular. However while it might be popular amongst regular users, it seems that the app isn’t as secure as some governments would like.
It seems that the European Parliament has blocked the use of the app internally, claiming that it was too insecure at least by the government’s standards. This is apparently because of a feature of the app which shares password information with Microsoft and also because its emails are stored in a third-party cloud that the European Parliament does not have access to.
According to an email sent out by the Parliament’s IT department, “Please do not install this application, and in case you have already done so for your EP corporate mail, please uninstall it immediately and change your password.” It also seems that the European Parliament is not alone in their concerns.
The University of Wisconsin has also stated that they will be blocking the use of the app due to the same reasons outlined by the European Parliament. As it stands it seems Microsoft is pretty happy with the app’s security as they claim that it has met the company’s thresholds, but if they don’t want to start bleeding more users for their newly launched app, perhaps this is something they could look into.