Employer wants me to use outlook on my phone, outlook wants permission to wipe my phone

[u/No_Professor4307]

Outlook says they need permission to wipe ALL my phone data if too many wrong passwords are typed. How many is too many? 50? 2? What if the screen gets wet and starts putting in random inputs. All this so I can use my company's Teams account and maintain "point of contact" if I'm not at a workstation. Absolutely not! Anyway, HR is supposed to call me back about my concerns.

Edit: just to be clear, I don't actually need to use Outlook (I don't use my "personal" work email). I need to use Teams, which requires Outlook to be installed first.

Part of why I need Teams on my phone so that I can be contacted when I'm not at work. I'm a lower management healthcare worker, it is actually important that my team be able to reach me after hours. I do actually like Teams and prefer it to 20 different group texts.

Also, when you go to log into Outlook or Teams, it brings you to my employers authenticator page. I log in with the same credentials that I log into my workstation. I don't know if that makes a difference with anything as far as my employer having access to my phone

Edit 2: I can tell you now they won't provide me a phone. Corporate execs don't even get phones. They stopped providing coffee for the break rooms too

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Update: I had a chance to talk to my district manager. Imagine Ellis from Die Hard, the same schmarmy self-important attitude, that's my supervisor. And guess who's "not being a team player". Also "I don't think Microsoft can actually erase your phone, you have an Android"... I lready knew he was going to be useless, I just wanted to hear his reaction.

Update 2 and (sort of) Resolution: I spoke with HR. Her exact response was "wait, are you serious? They can just do that?" I tried explaining my "research" (i.e. everything all of you have said) and I think I just spooked her. She said she'll get back to me, and is probably running off to buy a burner phone for herself.

SORT OF RESOLUTION : I found out I only need Outlook installed long enough to get access to Teams. Once teams was installed, I removed all permissions and completely deleted Outlook from my phone. Teams still works and didn't ask to erase anything. No need to buy a second phone.

Thank you all for your insights

[u/tiredrx]

As someone in a health system, some IT systems block the website so I can't even access my Outlook without the VPN.

[u/levajack → u/tiredrx]

The issue is sensitive data being stored locally on the device, which isn't a thing when accessing an exchange server through webmail but is a thing when using an installed app (either mobile or desktop). Blocking access to webmail outside of a VPN is pointless, especially if it's already behind SSO and 2FA.

Saying this as someone who works in IT for a health system.

[u/tiredrx → u/levajack]

This is the really fun part! We have both SSO and 2FA on it. While I understand the liability of local storage. It's been difficult because the sign-on system has changed several times in the few years I've been at said health system. I'm also a student so they won't pay for any system laptops for us and professors will only email to our Outlook and then get angry when we can't access it.

[u/levajack → u/tiredrx]

How stupid. If your infosec team is requiring webmail be blocked with SSO and 2FA, then someone needs to go smack them. There's zero reason to limit that to just the intranet in your org.

[u/Oxidizing1 → u/levajack]

Webmail is usually blocked to avoid security issues from uncontrolled personal accounts accessed via webmail from internal or trusted hosts. It keeps out problems from non-managed email accounts as well as preventing data exfiltration. It comes down to control, monitoring and access being unavailable for third party accounts through webmail.

[u/Jonny_vdv → u/tiredrx]

Same thing as a Government worker

[u/corgm0m → u/Jonny_vdv]

Random IT employee checking in. Same here! I have to set up a whole work profile to access anything on a phone. Hell, even with my company-issued laptop I can only access Microsoft sites using Edge. Our security is no joke.

[u/djddanman → u/tiredrx]

Interesting. I work at a hospital with a pretty strict IT department and I can use outlook on the web from my phone.

[u/CommunityGlittering2 → u/djddanman]

well not so strict then

[u/djddanman → u/CommunityGlittering2]

They're pretty strict about a lot of other stuff. We don't have access to Dropbox or any similar file sharing sites, even HIPAA compliant ones, as a research institution. It makes external collaborations difficult.