3 new ways the Microsoft Intune Suite offers security, simplification, and savings
Credit to Author: Michael Wallent and Dilip Radhakrishnan| Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2024 17:00:00 +0000
The power of endpoint management
Today, we are taking a significant step in completing the delivery of functionality we promised when we first unveiled the vision for the Microsoft Intune Suite.1 We are launching three new solutions: Microsoft Intune Enterprise Application Management, Microsoft Intune Advanced Analytics, and Microsoft Cloud PKI. With these additions, the Intune Suite now goes beyond unified endpoint management to bring you a comprehensive collection of advanced cross-platform capabilities across three core areas: streamlined application security, secure access to on-premises and private cloud resources, and improved troubleshooting and support. While we will continue to add more functionality over time, today’s release marks “the end of the beginning,” as the main components of the Intune Suite are generally available this month. As such, let’s take the opportunity to recap the principles behind the value and functionality of the Intune Suite.
The broad value of the Intune Suite
While the solutions of the Intune Suite launched at different points in time, three fundamental principles have been there from the beginning.
First, one place for workloads adjacent to Unified Endpoint Management. If you’re currently using a mix of third-party solutions, the integrated experience in Microsoft Intune provides security and efficiency on multiple levels. First, one unified solution means fewer integrations to manage across third parties, meaning fewer attack vectors for malicious actors. And second, on a deeper level, the broader Intune proposition (both Intune Suite and Intune) is integrated with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Security solutions. This provides a consolidated and seamless experience for IT professionals with a single pane of glass for end-to-end endpoint management.
Second, all parts of the Intune Suite are ready to support your cloud and AI-enabled future. Intune Suite will help accelerate organizations’ digital transformation to cloud native and simplify their IT operations. Additionally, data from Intune Suite are consolidated with other Intune and security data, meaning complete visibility across the device estate, informing and improving emerging technologies like Microsoft Copilot for Security. The more interrelated data that Copilot can use, the more it can proactively advise on the next best action.
Lastly, Intune Suite is available in a single unified plan. So, rather than having separate solutions for remote assistance, privilege management, analytics, and more, these advanced solutions can all be consolidated and simplified into one. This provides value in two ways: directly, by reducing the overall licensing cost, as the cost of Intune Suite is less than purchasing separate solutions; and the economic value of the Intune Suite is also in indirect savings: no need to manage separate vendors, train IT admins on separate tools, or maintain costly on-premises public key infrastructure (PKI). The Intune Suite makes it easier for IT admins, reducing overhead costs.
“With what we get out of Intune Suite, we can eliminate other products that our customers need. It’s now a suite of many components that enable customers who want to consolidate solutions and save money.”
—Mattias Melkersen Kalvåg, Mobility and Windows Management Consultant at MINDCORE, and| Microsoft Certified Professional & MVP
From today: A comprehensive suite across applications, access needs, and support
Let’s get into specifics. For application security, Enterprise App Management helps you find, deploy, and update your enterprise apps. And Endpoint Privilege Management lets you manage elevation rules on a per-app basis so that even standard users can run approved privileged apps. Cloud PKI lets you manage certificates from the cloud in lieu of complex, on-premises PKI infrastructure. And Microsoft Tunnel for Mobile Application Management (MAM) is perfect for unenrolled, personal mobile devices, to help broker secure access to line of business apps. Advanced Analytics gives you data-rich insights across your endpoints. And Remote Help lets you view and control your PCs, Mac computers, and specialized mobile devices, right from the Intune admin center. Let us take each of those three product areas in turn.
Increase endpoint security with Enterprise App Management and Endpoint Privilege Management
Enterprise App Management gives you a new app catalog, allowing you to easily distribute managed apps, but also keep them patched and always up to date. With this initial release, you will be able to discover and deploy highly popular, pre-packaged apps, so you no longer need to scour the Internet to find their installation files, repackage, and upload them into Intune. Simply add and deploy the apps directly from their app publishers. You can also allow the apps you trust to self-update, and when a new update is available, it is just one click to update all your devices with that app installed. We will continuously expand and enrich the app catalog functionality in future releases to further advance your endpoint security posture and simplify operations.
“I’m very excited about Enterprise App Management as it’s powered by a strong app catalog and natively integrated in Intune. This single pane of glass experience is what we’re all looking for.”
—Niklas Tinner, Microsoft MVP and Senior Endpoint Engineer at baseVISION AG
For more control over your apps, with Endpoint Privilege Management, you can scope temporary privilege elevation, based on approved apps and processes. Then, as a user in scope for this policy, you can elevate only the processes and apps that have been approved. For example, users can only run a single app for a short period of time as an administrator. Unlike other approaches that give local admin permissions or virtually unlimited scope, you can selectively allow a user to elevate in a one-off scenario by requesting Intune admin approval, without you needing to define the policy ahead of time.
“Endpoint Privilege Management offers tight integration into the operating system. And the focus that Microsoft has over only elevating specific actions and apps versus making you an admin for a period of time—this is security at its best, going for the least privileged access.”
—Michael Mardahl, Cloud Architect at Apento
Cloud PKI and Microsoft Tunnel for MAM powers secure access
Enhancements to Microsoft Entra certificate-based authentication
With Cloud PKI, providing both root and issuing Certificate Authorities (CA) in the cloud, you can simply set up a PKI in minutes, manage the certificate lifecycle, reduce the need for extensive technical expertise and tools, and minimize the effort and cost of maintaining on-premises infrastructure. In addition, support for Bring-Your-Own CA is available, allowing you to anchor Intune’s Issuing CA to your own private CA. Certificates can be deployed automatically to Intune-managed devices for scenarios such as authentication to Wi-Fi, VPN, and more; a modern PKI management option that works well to secure access with Microsoft Entra certificate-based authentication. In the initial release, Cloud PKI will also work with your current Active Directory Certificate Services for SSL and TLS certificates, but you do not need to deploy certificate revocation lists, Intune certificate connectors, Network Device Enrollment Service (NDES) servers, or any reverse proxy infrastructure. You can issue, renew, or revoke certificates directly from the Intune admin center automatically or manually.
Microsoft Tunnel for MAM helps secure mobile access to your private resources. Microsoft Tunnel for MAM works similarly to Microsoft Tunnel for managed devices; however, with this advanced solution, Microsoft Tunnel for MAM works with user-owned (non-enrolled) iOS and Android devices. Microsoft Tunnel for MAM provides secure VPN access at the app level, for just the apps and browser (including Microsoft Edge) your IT admin explicitly authorizes. So, for personally owned devices, the user can access approved apps, without your company’s data moving onto the user’s personal device. App protection policies protect the data within the apps, preventing unauthorized data leakage to other apps or cloud storage locations.
“Cloud PKI within the Intune Suite allows you to go cloud native in terms of certificate deployment, which means you can provision PKIs with just a few clicks—that’s a blessing for all the IT administrators. With this built-in service, Microsoft hosts everything for you to manage certificates.”
—Niklas Tinner
Resolve support issues quicker with Advanced Analytics and Remote Help
Advanced Analytics in Intune is a powerful set of tools for actionable reporting and AI-driven analytics. It provides deep, near real-time insights into your connected devices and managed apps that help you understand, anticipate, and proactively improve the user experience. We continue to infuse AI and machine learning into our analytics products. For example, you can get ahead of battery degradation in your device fleet through our advanced statistical analysis and use that information to prioritize hardware updates. Intune Suite now includes real-time device querying on-demand using Kusto Query Language for individual devices, useful for troubleshooting and resolving support calls quicker.
With Remote Help, you can also streamline the way you remotely view and interact with your managed devices, for both user-requested or unattended sessions. As a help desk technician, you can securely connect to both enrolled and unenrolled devices. Users also have peace of mind in being able to validate the technician’s identity, to avoid help desk spoofing attempts. Right now, Remote Help works for remote viewing and controlling in Windows PCs and Android dedicated Enterprise devices, and supports remote viewing for macOS. Especially useful for frontline workers, Remote Help for Android allows help desk administrators to configure and troubleshoot unattended devices, meaning issues can be revolved off-shift.
“Remote Help takes away the requirement and the need for third-party remote help tools. Remote Help is native, it’s interactive, and you don’t have to worry about installing anything, it’s already there. It’s part of Intune, it’s part of the build.”
—Matthew Czarnoch, Cloud and Infrastructure Operations Manager at RLS (Registration and Licensing Services)
To see many of these new capabilities in action, we invite you to watch this new Microsoft Mechanics video.
Analyst recognition for Microsoft
With the additions to the Intune Suite now available, IT can power a more secure and productive future at an important time as AI comes online. Notably, analyst recognition is validating the importance of its value. For example, Microsoft again assumes the strongest leadership position in the Omdia Universe: Digital Workspace Management and Unified Endpoint Management Platforms 2024. Omdia wrote: “Microsoft is focused on reducing management costs by utilizing the Microsoft Intune Suite and integrating different solutions with it.” They added: “The company plans to invest in Endpoint Analytics and Security Copilot to introduce data-driven management, helping IT professionals shift from reactive, repetitive tasks to strategic ones by utilizing Endpoint Analytics and automation.” Omdia’s recognition follows that from others like Forrester, who named Microsoft as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Unified Endpoint Management, Q4 2023.
Get started with consolidated endpoint management solutions with the Microsoft Intune Suite
The February 2024 release of the solutions in the Intune Suite marks a key milestone, offering a consolidated, comprehensive solution set together in a cost-effective bundle (and available as individual add-on solutions) for any plan that includes Intune. And in April 2024, they will also be available to organizations and agencies of the United States government community cloud. We look forward to hearing your reactions to the new Intune Suite.
- Microsoft Intune News at Microsoft Ignite 2023.
- Learn more about Microsoft Intune.
- Omdia Universe: Digital Workspace Management/Unified Endpoint Management Platforms 2024.
- Forrester Wave™ for Unified Endpoint Management, Q4 2023.
- Microsoft Cloud PKI blog announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2023.
- Microsoft Intune Enterprise App Management blog announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2023.
- Microsoft Intune Advanced Analytics blog announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2023.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
1Ease the burden of managing and protecting endpoints with Microsoft advanced solutions, Dilip Radhakrishnan and Gideon Bibliowicz. April 5, 2022.
The Forrester Wave™ is copyrighted by Forrester Research, Inc. Forrester and Forrester Wave™ are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Wave™ is a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments. Forrester does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in the Forrester Wave™. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
The Forrester Wave™: Unified Endpoint Management, Q4 2023, Andrew Hewitt, Glen O’Donnell, Angela Lozada, Rachel Birrell. November 19, 2023.
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