imap_open in php suddenly stopped working reading office 365 mail box from 15 Oct 2022

Question

imap_open in php suddenly stopped working reading office 365 mail box from 15 Oct 2022. Talked to a Vendor of Office 365. He adviced to use TLS 1.2. But I have no idea how to use TLS 1.2 in my code.

How to incorporate TLS 1.2 in the code? The error I am getting is as below:

Can not authenticate to IMAP server: AUTHENTICATE failed.

$username =  $row->email;
$password =  $row->password;

$mailbox = "{outlook.office365.com:993/imap/ssl/authuser=$username}";
$inbox = imap_open($mailbox, $username, $password);


if (!$inbox){
    print imap_last_error();      
}