Microsoft Intune

Getting started with Windows Local Administrator Password Solution

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This week is all about another nice feature that was recently introduced in Windows, Microsoft Intune, and Azure AD. That feature is Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (Windows LAPS). Windows LAPS is basically the evolution of the already existing LAPS solution for domain joined Windows devices. Big difference, however, is that Windows LAPS is now a built-in solution in Windows that can be configured via Microsoft Intune and that can use Azure AD as a storage location for the local administrator password. Windows LAPS can be used to manage the password of a single local administrator account on the device. The most obvious account for that would be the built-in local administrator account, as that account can’t be deleted and has full permissions on the …

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Getting started with Advanced Endpoint Analytics

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This week is another post about one of the new Intune Suite add-on capabilities. This time it’s all about Advanced Endpoint Analytics. Advanced Endpoint Analytics adds-on to Endpoint Analytics by providing organizations access to more intelligence to gain even deeper insights into the user experience. It provides IT administrators with the tools to proactively detect and remediate issues that impact user productivity. All of that can be achieved with the new capabilities that are part of Advanced Endpoint Analytics. Those capabilities are anomaly detection, enhanced device timeline, and device scopes. Three powerful capabilities that enable IT administrators to use machine learning to identity anomalies, to have a detailed device timeline, and to have the ability to look at a specific set of devices. When an organization has …

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Getting started with Endpoint Privilege Management

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This week is another post about one of the new Intune Suite add-on capabilities. This time it’s all about Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM). At this moment EPM is still in preview, but once it becomes general available it will be licensed as part of the Microsoft Intune Suite. EPM enables organizations to provide standard user permissions to their users and still enable those users to complete tasks that require elevated permissions. Those tasks can include the installation of applications, updating device drivers, running diagnostics, and more. With that, EPM fits perfectly in the Zero Trust architecture of any organization. It enables the principle of using the least privilege, while still allowing users to run specifically approved tasks with elevated permissions. So, users remain productive and elevations are …

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Working with Windows Autopilot deployment events

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This week is a short post about the Windows Autopilot deployment events that are registered in Microsoft Intune. In a way, a follow up post on this post of about a year ago. While that post was mainly focused on informing IT administrators about the status of Windows Autopilot deployments, this post will be more focused on awareness. Awareness for the deviceManagementAutopilotEvent resource type in Microsoft Graph that contains all the information about Windows Autopilot deployment events. It’s still an often forgotten resource type that does provide a lot of useful information about Windows Autopilot deployments and is also the basis for Windows Autopilot deployment report. This post will provide some more details of the properties that are available within that resource type, the content …

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Analyzing Windows Defender Application Control events in audit mode

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This week is all about Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC). That’s not a new subject for this blog. The main difference, however, with previous posts is that this time the focus will be on monitoring the different events when the WDAC policy is running in audit mode. Audit mode enables IT administrators to discover applications, binaries, and scripts that are missing from the configured WDAC policy, but actually should be included. Instead of the action actually being blocked, audit mode will only write an event in the Event Log. Those events can be used to further tune the WDAC policy, and to make sure that it’s production ready. For centrally logging that event information, this blog will be relying on using the the Azure Monitor …

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Getting started with Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile Application Management for Android

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This week is a follow-up on the post of last week. While last week the focus was on iOS/iPadOS devices, this week the focus is on Android devices. Some parts might overlap with that post of last week, but those parts are definitely needed for the completeness of the story and the configuration. So, in general, the focus is still on Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile Application Management (Tunnel for MAM). As mentioned last week, Tunnel for MAM is one of the features that was released at the beginning of March as part of the Intune Suite add-ons. Tunnel for MAM itself, is available as part of the new Microsoft Intune Plan 2 license. The great thing about Tunnel for MAM is that it makes it …

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Getting started with Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile Application Management for iOS/iPadOS

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This week is all about one of the new Intune Suite add-on capabilities. The capability of focus is Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile Application Management (Tunnel for MAM) for iOS/iPadOS devices. The Intune Suite add-ons were released at the beginning of March, including a new licensing model, and including Tunnel for MAM. That capability on itself, is available as part of the new Microsoft Intune Plan 2 license. Tunnel for MAM makes it possible to provide access to on-premises resources, on unmanaged devices. Often unmanaged devices are equal to personal-owned devices. So, that provides IT with the flexibility to make that app, with on-premises interaction, available on personal-owned devices. Without requiring the user to enroll that specific device, but still enforcing secure access and guaranteeing full …

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Easily managing Microsoft Defender Antivirus updates channels

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This week is all about managing the updates channels for the different Microsoft Defender Antivirus update types. On one hand to create some awareness for the different update types, and on the other hand to show the latest configurations options for managing the updates channels for those different update types. Microsoft Defender Antivirus contains three different update types and up to six updates channel configuration options. That provides IT administrators with quite some configuration options for the devices within the environment. And starting with the latest service release of Microsoft Intune (2302), the update channel configurations becomes easily configurable via a specific configuration profile. That enables IT administrators to also use different update channels throughout the environment to gradually rollout the different updates of Microsoft …

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Deploying Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Office

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This week is all about Microsoft Defender Application Guard (Application Guard) for Office. It’s a follow up on this post of almost 2 years ago. That time the focus was simply on getting started with Application Guard and it slightly missed out on Application Guard for Office. This time Application Guard for Office will be the main focus. Application Guard for Office uses hardware isolation to isolate untrusted Office files, by running the Office application in an isolated Hyper-V container. That isolation makes sure that anything potentially harmful in those untrusted Office files, happens within that isolated Hyper-V container and is isolated from the host operating system. That isolation provides a nice, but resource intensive, additional security layer. This post will start with a quick …

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Configuring search on Windows 11 taskbar

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This week a short blog post about a small new setting that became available within Windows 11. That setting is the ability to configure search on the taskbar. With the latest version of Windows 11, Microsoft added a search box to the taskbar that enables users to easily find almost anything. It searches across Windows, OneDrive, SharePoint, and more. And it can find apps, files, settings, help, people ,and more. That makes it a very versatile search option for daily Windows users. Very powerful. The new setting enables users to configure the availability of search on the Windows 11 taskbar. From hidden till icon and label. That new setting can also be configured by the administrator, to enforce specific behavior. It could, for example, be …

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