Locked account resolutions

Environment: StFX email accounts

Purpose: What to do when locked out

If you have been noticing intermittent access to services or receiving errors about being locked out you are more then likely experiencing account locking.  Account locking will put your account into a suspended state which will prevent you from accessing services for period of 3 to 5minutes. 

WHY IT HAPPENS

When device, application or service attempts to login to your account using an invalid credentials 7 consecutive times the system will automatically suspend access to your account as it treats the incident as an attack.   After three minutes the account is automatically unlocked until the next 7 authentication failures.  This is where your intermittent access is originating.   These could be coming from a login on a device you use or it could be from anywhere in the world.    

WHAT TO DO

Check your Devices to Ensure all passwords are up to date.

1. On your Mobile Devices:
   • Go to your wireless settings and Forget the network, then reconnect using the password
   • If you have your stfx mail configured on a mail client ensure it is using the most recent password.
2. On your computer systems:
   • Disconnect and reconnect to wireless using the new password (if not prompted to enter your password, forget the network and reconnect)
   • Open up your email Clients (Outlook, iCloud, etc) and update your email password
   • Check for saved passwords, and update any entries that are using your stfx username/email (Microsoft Office Entries should be removed)
     • Windows Credential Manager (For Windows Users)
     • Mac Keychain (For MacOS Users)

  TIP: Unsure what devices are connecting to your Email, Microsoft 365 can help.

Microsoft 365 provides details on which devices are accessing your email.

1. Log in to myaccount.microsoft.com
2. Select Manage Devices
3. From here you can see all devices currently logged into your stfx email, and remove devices that you do not recognize