This is the fourth in our series of blog posts on cyber security – you can find the full series of blogs on our website. This post will look at Microsoft Intune, a software solution that manages access to your business resources and simplifies the process of using business apps and software on numerous different devices.
So, what exactly is Intune?
Going into some very fancy technical terminology, Intune is a unified endpoint management service. In practice, it is a tool that allows you to bring together the various apps and devices that you and your employees use as part of the day-to-day running of the business. This can really simplify the process for things like managing user access, providing access to applications, integrating cyber security defence across multiple devices and resolving IT issues (such as resetting passwords or enforcing multifactor authentication).
One of the key features of Intune is that it works across different platforms. As well as Windows, Intune is compatible with Android, iOS & macOS and Linux. If you’ve ever tried to get an Apple and Android device to play nicely with each other, you’ll know how difficult it can be. Using Intune means that, even if you have a Windows laptop, Apple mobile and Android tablet, you can easily manage the access you and your team have to the apps and information you need to work seamlessly.
As well as helping with the ‘corporate’ devices your business uses, you can also use it for personal devices as well. This opens a lot of flexibility for your business, as Intune can provide security measures that allow you to ‘ringfence’ company data on personal devices, allowing you the ability to wipe your business information from personal devices if needed. This could allow you and your staff to safely use personal devices for work purposes, potentially giving you significant savings on purchasing additional equipment.
How would Intune help my business?
This is a relatively easy one to answer. Any of the issues listed above could be time-consuming. Let’s take managing user access. If you have a company where you or your employees work on multiple devices, maybe a computer in the office and a mobile for out and about, making sure people have the right access, the right apps and that everything is up-to-date on both devices can be a real pain, especially when those devices are on different operating platforms. Using Intune gives you a single portal from which you can manage access on all the devices you have in your company.
As well as saving the time and hassle of having to manually update or change individual devices, being able to control access from a central point gives you the peace of mind that you know who has access to what. For example, it can be so easy to forget to remove access when a person leaves a company, especially if that person had access to numerous devices. Using Intune helps to limit the chance for oversights, providing additional security for you and your business.
Along with this, Intune also allows you to identify older devices and, particularly, highlight when they are reaching their “end of life” period. This is critical nowadays both as you don’t want to be burdened with slow-running computers, importantly, older devices can be more susceptible to security issues.
What else does Intune provide?
There are a lot more benefits you can get from using Intune too, depending on the plan you purchase. It integrates with other Microsoft services, including the Microsoft 365 app suite (including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive), allowing you to deploy these apps (if you have a subscription) to your users. It also integrates with Windows Autopatch, which keeps your software updated, Microsoft Defender, to keep your devices protected, and even Microsoft Copilot, for AI generated analysis (and other funky AI stuff).
As well as Microsoft products, Intune also integrates with key third-party applications from Google Play and Apple. This allows you to manage the use of apps from these services on your business devices, which can provide numerous benefits. For instance, if you start to use a new service that comes with an app as part of the package, you can configure Intune so that the app is automatically installed on everyone’s device.
Intune offers even more than this, including the use of Windows Hello or single sign-on to sign in to devices and the creation of Virtual Private Networks for remote users.
How can I get Intune?
Microsoft offer a number of ways to get Intune, both as part of some of the M365 subscription plans and as a standalone service. We’d definitely recommend having a chat with an IT professional (and, luckily for you, you are on the website of a pretty swell IT professional right now!) to understand both which plan might be right for you, and to talk about the best way to set up and maintain access to apps and information through Intune.
If that all sounds pretty interesting, and you’d like to discuss how Intune can support your business (or would like to discuss another IT related question), please drop your friendly neighborhood IT professional a line at contact@mckeownscullin.com.
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