Everything you need to know about Microsoft Intune

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When changes like these are inevitable it can also create a challenging situation for your employees! Ensuring the security of your enterprise data while allowing your employees to work from the comfort of your homes can indeed be an excruciating task for you. But with Microsoft Intune, you no longer need to worry about all this…

What is Microsoft Intune and why you should be leveraging it?

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that focuses on Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Management (MAM).  With Mobile Device Management, you can control how your devices (both organizational and personal) are used, whether they are Windows PC, Mac, iOS, or Android. Similarly with Microsoft Application Management (MAM), you can manage and configure the client apps that your team uses.

Why manage your devices and applications?

When your employees are using desktops, phones, or tablets, to access your business data, chances are high for those devices to be compromised if they…

• Have an out-of-date version of the operating system.
• Have not installed proper anti-virus software.
• Have turned off the firewall or have a weak and vulnerable password.

Similarly, if your enterprise has adopted a hybrid working model, your IT team should manage the client apps that your team uses and ensure the end-users have access to all the applications they need to perform their work. Now, this can be a challenge because:

• There is a wide range of device platforms and app types.
• You might manage apps on both enterprise devices and your employees’ personal devices.
• You don’t have control of the network that your employees are connected to.

Like these, there are various limitations that restrain your enterprise from delivering its security standards, which can lead to data breaches and malicious attacks. By incorporating Intune’s enterprise mobility management service, you can manage the mobile devices and the applications that your employees are using to access your digital assets.

Want to know how to bolster your enterprise security with Intune?  Continue reading our blog…

Here are the top eight benefits of Microsoft Intune that can enhance your enterprise security

1. Offers secure access to your on-premise servers for your employees

A lot of enterprises still have an on-premise servers for several reasons. And the main reason cited by them for sticking to on-premise servers is security! When on-premises servers can be good for your security, they may not be good for collaboration. Especially when your team is working from remote, they may not be able to access their email and corporate data. By leveraging Intune-managed certificates with standard VPN gateways or proxies, you can easily enable your mobile apps to access on-premise data. Now, this process is completely secure because when you enroll your employees’ devices in Intune, the management system will first ensure that those devices are compliant with your policies and then provide access to your corporate data.

2. Helps you enable conditional access policies to protect your enterprise data

With Intune and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security, you can leverage the conditional access policies to ensure none of your users’ apps or devices gain access to your Office 365 data unless they comply with your organization’s security standards. For example, if you have placed a condition that your employees require multi-factor authentication to access your corporate data, they can’t access it unless they fulfill the MFA criteria.

3. Enhances your device management programs

Employees to a great extent are concerned about the idea of carrying a second device for managing their work-related activities. In these cases, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program can be a fantastic option for your enterprises. To successfully proceed with this working model, you need to ensure your employees allow you to take complete control over their devices. But most of the time, your employees may not prefer to give you complete control over their personal devices that they are using for organizational purposes.

Instead of insisting your employees provide complete access over their devices, like mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, you can leverage the app protection policies in Intune. These app protection policies will manage only the apps that deal with corporate data (all the Office 365 mobile apps), instead of taking full control over your employees’ devices. For example, with these policies, you can control your Outlook users from copying text from an organizational email profile into their personal email profile.

4. Let’s you enable a limited-use mode for managing iOS and Android tablets

Nowadays employees want to make the business happen on the go! And there are certain instances where they need to have a handy device like a tablet to be in pace with the retail processes like checking the inventory, processing a sale, and assisting a customer. With Intune, you can enable a limited use-mode for those shared devices so that your employees can access only the applications that are needed to perform their specific tasks. You can even configure the limited-use mode across all shared devices using a bulk provision as well.

5. Helps you limit employee access to your enterprise data only to the devices that you control

At times your employees may try to access your corporate data from devices that you can’t manage. They may try to open their emails from public kiosks, or desktops in hotel lobbies. When they access your digital assets from devices, apps, and servers that you can’t manage, it can become a threat to your security. With Intune and Microsoft EM + S you can easily restrict email access to devices that are managed by your organization. Now this will ensure that your employees don’t accidentally leave your corporate data on unreliable servers and devices.

6. Protects your organization’s data at the application level

With Intune, you can protect your enterprise data at the application level. Your employees may have access to the office applications, on both their company and personal devices. Intune Mobile Application Management (MAM) will empower your IT administrators to retain control over their apps on all devices. With this extra layer of protection, you can configure app settings, track app usage, and wipe your enterprise data from applications that deal with your confidential business information. Thus, isolating your organizational data from your users’ personal devices can be made easy with Mobile Application Management (MAM) feature in Microsoft Intune.

7. Enables a swift transition to the cloud

Intune is not going to force your enterprise to make the transition to the cloud. But as a cloud platform, it gives you the opportunity to make the transition to the cloud. And if your enterprise is planning to move away from on-premise servers to the cloud, this can be an impeccable way to do it. Compared to on-premise servers, the cloud architecture is scalable and up to date. Provided, you can make the shift to the cloud with peace of mind knowing that your enterprise data is protected by Intune.

8. Allows your IT team to operate with greater efficiency

Microsoft Intune for your enterprise can optimize the efficiency of your IT teams and reduce their workloads to a great extent with its bulk provisioning features. Your IT engineers, instead of deploying software for one individual device at a time, can now do it across all enrolled devices with Intune. They can also easily control updates to ensure that the end-users have up-to-date software and apps. Not just this, tracking the licensing, collecting information about the hardware configuration, and managing the software installments can all be made easy and unified with Microsoft Intune.

Let’s sum it up!

With the increasing number of remote workforce, you need to streamline application usage across all devices without compromising on your corporate data. Apart from that, greater efficiency in the cloud and improved employee productivity are some of the key things that can support your enterprise to achieve scalability in 2022!

Are you planning to get started with Intune? Talk to our Microsoft 365 experts today!

Incorporating Intune can ideally become a good decision for your enterprise security. But before getting started, you need to conduct a proper conversation with your key stakeholders and employees to ensure that this implementation won’t hinder your day-to-day enterprise productivity.

Being a Microsoft 365 Gold Partners, our cyber security experts will analyze your systems and address your unique enterprise security challenges with the most feasible and scalable solutions.