microsoft endpoint configuration manager

First, the bad news for all of you who currently subscribe to various Microsoft 365 offerings: this is an additional license over and above what you already have.

While running without administrative rights is a goal, the reality is that we still need, at times, elevated privileges to perform certain tasks.Įnter the Intune suite of additional add-ons. The local administrator password solution (LAPS) was introduced to randomize these passwords, but that required a domain and an active directory - what if your network was all cloud-based and didn’t have a domain? In addition, there are already known tools designed to go after the LAPS solution on your network.

We would often use the same local administrative password to begin the deployment of workstations.īut attackers knew we were doing this and would use our common local password to perform lateral movements in a network. For many years, Microsoft provided a toolkit to ensure that network administrators could keep local administrators on workstations more secure. Microsoft is continuing to improve and advance the solutions to ensure that we stay one step ahead of attackers. First up is an additional emphasis on least privilege. Intune has slowly but surely been chipping away at the differential between on-premises control tools and cloud-based tools and recently Microsoft has announced several new features. Intune extends the functionality of some Active Directory features and that of the Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager to the Microsoft Azure cloud. What if you didn’t have such a domain to deal with, or were starting over fresh with a totally distributed network linked together only by cloud connections? You would probably turn to Microsoft’s Intune, a cloud-based unified endpoint management service for both corporate and bring-your-own-device technology. It does, however, require a traditional domain with an Active Directory deployment - many users already have an Active Directory (AD) and will have an AD domain for many years into the future.

For many years, the Group Policy feature of Microsoft’s Windows has been the go-to solution for controlling workstations, providing deployment, and in general, making a network manageable by information professionals.

Microsoft endpoint configuration manager