Microsoft Intune stands as a flagship product from Microsoft, delivering cloud-based endpoint management and protection. With its robust capabilities, it facilitates organization and assessment for corporate systems.
In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the intricacies of Microsoft Intune, exploring its various components, operational mechanisms, and its pivotal role in overcoming business challenges. Furthermore, we'll analyze the advantages and drawbacks of utilizing Microsoft Intune within a business context, providing valuable insights to guide your strategic decisions.
6 Challenges Microsoft Intune Solves
Microsoft Intune serves as a capable solution for business leaders, tackling the following challenges:
- Lack of visibility – for larger systems, it can be hard to manage all of those distributed endpoints. Microsoft Intune provides a capable way for leaders to keep tabs on each data destination and micromanage effectively.
- Social engineering attacks – enhanced endpoint protection significantly reduces the likelihood of unauthorized access by phishers or other malicious actors to a network. It also offers a layer of defense against a range of other vulnerabilities.
- Remote workforce – as companies increasingly shift corporate data to remote workers, the significance of endpoint management grows, and Microsoft Intune plays a pivotal role in delivering the necessary network hardening measures.
- BYOD – the ‘bring your own device’ or BYOD phenomenon means that employees or others will be using personal devices to access corporate data. Microsoft Intune can also be effective in this type of endpoint protection.
- Endpoint overload – when too many agents clutter the endpoints, vulnerabilities can escalate, leading to overwhelming chaos. In such scenarios, a comprehensive management suite like Microsoft Intune emerges as the ideal solution, offering streamlined endpoint management to mitigate risks and restore order.
- Poor patch management – inadequate setup of change management often leads to extensive manual labor and frustration.
For more on Intune's cybersecurity features, check out, Simplify Endpoint Security with Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Cloud PKI
The Microsoft Intune Suite
Within the Microsoft Intune suite of tools, you'll find advanced endpoint analytics and a VPN tunnel designed specifically for mobile apps. With various specialized device management features, Microsoft Intune offers customization tailored to your business network.
Let's highlight some key features of Microsoft Intune that apply to corporate systems.
Microsoft Intune Web-based Administration Center
This web-based administration center is the dashboard of Microsoft Intune’s set of tools. It allows anyone with the proper credentials to access and monitor an Intune instance from anywhere.
Microsoft describes the admin center as a “portal” into your network. For example, let's say a senior manager might be in the field trying to figure out whether certain types of policies or protections are applied—Intune's Admin Center makes that a very simple task.
VPN and Microsoft Tunnel
For decades, VPNs have been a go-to for remote systems protection. By creating a secure encrypted tunnel for information from an endpoint to a network core, VPNs help protect data going on and off your secure network. VPNs are especially useful if users are accessing your network from a public location—like at an airport—where, without a VPN tunnel, hackers could easily grab sensitive information.
Zero-Trust Model
Microsoft Intune works on the zero trust model, meaning it considers all traffic suspicious by default. This way, traffic is vetted for legitimacy directly rather than through a system like a traditional firewall, which tends to filter out specific activity and let the rest through. As Microsoft puts it, zero trust “assumes (a) breach and verifies each request as though it originates from an open network,” which can decrease the risk of an actual threat.
Windows Autopilot
This Microsoft Intune feature offers a setup wizard for new devices connecting to the network. By enrolling devices in the device management program, users can quickly and effectively get the power of Microsoft Intune working on any endpoint. The use of Windows Autopilot eliminates the need for device reimaging.
Configuration Manager
The configuration manager makes it easier to manage a distributed network by helping with things like patch management and other changes. As we'll see later, one of the top things that reviewers like about Microsoft Intune is the robust set of configuration tools. Microsoft promotes the configuration manager in part by claiming its potential for empowering users and getting more out of an enterprise device investment in hardware and software.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Defender allows for the effective onboarding of devices. With it, users can manage device compliance policies and set up conditional access policies for devices. For example, in BYOD scenarios, the administrator can block an employee's private phone from getting certain corporate information if the device is non-compliant. This kind of triage is invaluably useful to cybersecurity.
Experts talk about Microsoft Intune's ability to introduce and establish a "service-to-service connection" to describe how this type of endpoint protection works. Think about it like this: rather than just having a firewall work on incoming traffic from a set of personal employee phones, the Microsoft Intune system will compile the correct data on each connection to be able to apply those policies that protect.
Self-Service Capabilities
Microsoft Intune has the capacity for self-service. This includes the use of device reports and device compliance reports, as well as application inventory reports, user reports, and more. In terms of remote management, Retire – Wipe – Sync – and Remote Lock are all self-service tasks in the portal. This type of management showcases some of the best functionality made possible by the cloud and remote authentication in tandem.
Enterprise App Management
This component of Microsoft Intune allows leaders to set up devices to set rules on a per-app basis. Rather than doing this kind of work from on-premises infrastructure, Microsoft Intune supports full administration in the cloud. For example, a top manager can let some private devices run approved and privileged apps without opening up the rest of the desktop to network access, and run those apps in a cloud-native system.
Determining If Your Business Should Use Microsoft Intune
Let's look at some of the pros and cons of using this endpoint management and protection tool:
Pros
Some of the highest marks that reviewers have given Microsoft Intune are for its practical application of top-level goals like endpoint protection and better system visibility.
Reviewers also note that Microsoft Intune is suitable for capable policy enforcement—for example, by using the application-specific tools in the enterprise app management feature. Customers enjoy features like Windows Autopilot and MS Azure synergies. As mentioned above, and the reviewers seem to agree, the ability to use the configuration manager and toolkit for managing things like patching is a huge plus.
Another feather in Microsoft Intune’s cap is the full cloud design, which allows businesses to replace bulky on-premises administration with something lean and mean delivered through the Internet. The sea change toward the cloud has been going on for many years now, culminating in a massive trend of modernization away from on-premises hardware and toward migration to cloud models. MS Intune can be a key element in accomplishing this change.
Cons
One of the most commonly reported downsides around Microsoft Intune are the challenges that can arise using this toolkit with non-Microsoft systems and components.
Integration issues can happen on Android devices and extend to non-Windows operating systems. That being said, Microsoft Intune is reportedly working well with most Apple devices. One of the other main issues with the system is its rigid dashboard, where changing and customization can be difficult.
In terms of what businesses are best for using Microsoft Intune, many agree that this sort of endpoint protection is most effective for large networks and businesses with many employees and locations. People talk about using Microsoft Intune for distributed systems because it's so good at managing large-scale operations with a lot of moving parts.
For example, an organization where commissioning and decommissioning users might be a regular occurrence, where on-boarding and decommissioning devices happen all the time, and where device events are frequent is a good candidate for Intune.
However, large organizations can encounter another challenge—scheduling. Businesses with too much device activity might encounter scheduling problems, albeit problems that should be solvable with the right system tweaks. On the other hand, small businesses might get less of a tangible benefit from the oversight that Microsoft Intune provides.
That doesn't mean Intune isn't for small businesses, as achieving a lot of granular control on a smaller network is still possible. Still, a small business might not get as much out of it as it would if it were the type of network where admins might struggle with complexity prior to adoption. Moreover, Microsoft Intune often works better for companies where the business is better able to train all levels of staff internally. Some corporate cultures achieve this better than others, and user awareness makes a big difference with a suite like Microsoft Intune. Without the right collaboration, the client can have all sorts of problems with administering the tools provided.
Getting Started with Intune
In a nutshell, Microsoft Intune includes a lot of different tools, and they work well together to make sure that endpoints are protected in modern, complex systems.
So what's the next best step for your organization?
At Hypershift, we take the time to find out what your organizational goals are, and then we recommend a deployment strategy and timeline that fits your needs best. Get in touch with us, and let's find out which tools are right for your needs.
FAQ: Microsoft Intune
What is Microsoft Intune used for?
Microsoft Intune is used for effective endpoint protection and management of corporate systems. It provides a comprehensive toolkit for the entire device life cycle, from on-boarding to decommissioning.
How do I enroll a device in Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune contains specific on-boarding tools and information to show business leaders how to connect and commission devices.
What does Microsoft Intune do?
Microsoft Intune provides endpoint protection by setting up things like secure VPN, configuration manager, application-specific controls and more.
How much is Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is available to companies through a subscription basis. Costs vary according to plan choice and other factors; in general, Microsoft Intune comes with per-device fees in a range around $8.00-$10.00.
Are there cons to Microsoft Intune?
Some of the drawbacks connected to Microsoft Intune, as reported by users, involve using it with diverse systems where some devices and applications are not Windows-specific. Some have also reported problems trying to customize or change the software dashboard.
Is Microsoft Intune free?
Microsoft Intune is licensed software. It is not free: companies pay to use it for endpoint management, and tasks like reporting.
Is Microsoft Intune Safe?
Microsoft Intune is a safe technology and promotes endpoint safety and protection. In most cases, it's safer to run a system with Microsoft Intune than without it. Reports and other features may also be helpful to a more general cybersecurity effort for a given network.
What's the purpose of Microsoft Intune?
The purpose of Microsoft Intune is to help corporate networks harden their systems by pursuing effective endpoint management. It accomplishes this through many different tools: configuration manager, enterprise app management, VPN, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and others.
