Deploying Office 365 with Intune as a Win32 App (and Why You’d Want To)

Deploying Office 365 with Intune as a Win32 App (and Why You’d Want To)

Office 365, or Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, or whatever it's called this month, can be deployed by Intune to Windows 10 devices using a built-in wizard.  The advantage of this is you don't need to package anything: you fill out some nice drop-downs and options in a GUI, assign it like any other app, and Microsoft takes care of the rest. In the background, this is using the Office CSP to deploy the…
Troubleshooting Hybrid Azure AD Intune Automatic Enrollment

Troubleshooting Hybrid Azure AD Intune Automatic Enrollment

As I have blogged about a lot, there are a bunch of hoops to be jumped through and prerequisites to be met for a successful hybrid Azure AD join and automatic, GPO-invoked Intune enrollment. But sometimes, you have to go back to the basics when you're banging your head off the table, and laugh off the embarrassment of not checking the fundamentals. I was recently setting up hybrid Azure AD join and Intune enrollment,…
Update BitLocker Unique Identifiers with Intune

Update BitLocker Unique Identifiers with Intune

BitLocker unique identifiers are values used to identify the ownership of an encrypted volume.  The device that performs the encryption holds the unique identifier and as encryption begins, it also records this against the metadata of that encrypted volume. The identifiers are typically used in tandem with the BitLocker removable data-drive setting write access to devices configured in another organisation which, if set to block, will prevent write operations on devices where the unique…
Microsoft Defender Network Protection – Not Enabling via Intune – Troubleshooting & Fix

Microsoft Defender Network Protection – Not Enabling via Intune – Troubleshooting & Fix

When configuring Defender for Endpoint (MDE) customer recently, I ran into a problem when trying to enable network protection.  Network protection is a feature of MDE and Microsoft Defender Antivirus (MDAV) that takes the filtering capabilities of SmartScreen and applies them to all network traffic.  It is a prerequisite for things such as MDE's web content filtering and URL/domain indicators of compromise. This blog details the specific problem I had enabling it with Intune…
Use Intune to Manage Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Tags and Device Groups

Use Intune to Manage Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Tags and Device Groups

In Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE), tags can be attached to a device for reporting, filtering, and as a dynamic attribute for membership of a device group.  Device groups (previously machine groups), are used to assign devices different rules and administrative ownership.  A device can only belong to one group and controls settings such as auto-remediation level and which Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) roles have administrative permissions over it. While you can assign tags,…
Turn Existing Azure AD Devices into Windows Autopilot Devices

Turn Existing Azure AD Devices into Windows Autopilot Devices

To provision Windows 10 PCs using Autopilot and Intune, they must first be registered as Windows Autopilot devices in the Device Directory Service, which is really the cloud Autopilot service.  When a device is registered to the Autopilot service, its hardware hash is used to generate a Zero Touch Device ID (ZTDID) - a globally unique identifier for that device based on hardware information such as (but not only) MAC address, disk serial number,…
Understanding Application Guard for Office, Now Generally Available

Understanding Application Guard for Office, Now Generally Available

Application Guard first appeared in Windows 10 1709 ("Fall Creators Update") to isolate Edge browser activity within a Hyper V container.  Microsoft now extends that same idea to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 365 ProPlus Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise on Windows 10... ... if you have Microsoft 365 E5 or E5 Security.  You knew that was coming! With Application Guard for Office, your files can open in a sandbox without access local…
Store BitLocker Recovery Keys in Azure AD for Devices Already Encrypted

Store BitLocker Recovery Keys in Azure AD for Devices Already Encrypted

As you move from on-premises or third-party infrastructure to Microsoft 365 and Azure AD, you will want to keep those BitLocker recovery keys safe.  You can store those keys either in on-premises Active Directory or in the cloud with Azure AD. The behavior of the BitLocker / Azure AD relationship is that the recovery keys will only be stored against the device object in Azure AD if the encryption happens when the device is…
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Web Content Filtering – Administration, Limitations, and User Experience

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Web Content Filtering – Administration, Limitations, and User Experience

Historically, one of the big features missing "out of the box" with MDATP was web content filtering.  Customers typically look at MDATP as an option when their existing endpoint security is due for license renewal, and compare their existing solution against it.  They would be moving from one of the big security vendors such as Sophos, Norton, and McAfee, which all supported web content filtering.  Higher lever stakeholders often listed the ability to block…
Hybrid Azure AD Join + Intune Enrollment – Prerequisites Checklist and Process Flow

Hybrid Azure AD Join + Intune Enrollment – Prerequisites Checklist and Process Flow

I'm a simple person, and sometimes it just helps to have a checklist to refer to when you're troubleshooting rather than navigating the sparse pages of docs.microsoft.com.  In this blog, I  explain the prerequisites for the Hybrid Azure AD Join (HAADJ) + automatic (GPO controlled) Intune MDM enrollment scenario and the process from start to end, as simply and concisely as I can (not easy!)  There are no screenshots and it's not a click-by-click:…