Intune Suite is now available to government organizations

Government agencies and organizations face growing security risks and must adhere to recent cybersecurity government requirements, mandating adoption of a Zero Trust security architecture. This often leads to utilization of third-party tools to augment gaps in IT orchestration, increasing the complexity and management challenges within the IT environment. With the Microsoft Intune Suite and the native integration of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Security services, IT teams gain access to simplified endpoint management and versatile tools through a single, cloud-powered solution to protect endpoints on multiple platforms.

But it's never just about tools. They’re also looking to uncover efficiency gains and reduce costs related to securing the endpoint landscape while ensuring users are online and productive. The Intune Suite is the cost-effective answer to today's challenges. The suite of advanced endpoint solutions and capabilities reduce total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for multiple point solutions and expensive integration projects. In addition to increasing IT productivity, a recent Forrester study found that organizations were able to save up to $1M in breach related costs by improving their security posture with the Intune Suite.

The Intune Suite and its standalone solutions will be generally available on April 1, 2024, for customers in the United States federal, state, local, and tribal governments. This also includes contractors holding or processing data on behalf of the government who require Government Community Cloud level accreditation status.

These capabilities will help these groups on their path to Zero Trust and meet the requirements of the Executive Order. With the existing and most recently launched solutions of the Intune Suite, IT and security professionals can apply the three principles of Zero Trust at the endpoint level, a critical need in today's dynamic computing environments and increasing cybersecurity threats. They will be able to:

1. Verify explicitly.
   Microsoft Cloud PKI provides the foundational security mechanisms needed to establish trust in a Zero Trust environment, where trust is never assumed and must be continually earned through rigorous authentication and authorization mechanisms. With Microsoft Cloud PKI, IT admins can deploy certificates automatically to Intune-managed devices for scenarios such as authentication to Wi-Fi, VPN, and more. The identity of users and devices is verified using unique client authentication certificates before granting access. This ensures secure, dynamic, and fine-grained access control, protecting corporate resources regardless of location.
   
   With the rise of help desk spoofing, the strong authentication built into Microsoft Intune Remote Help and security controls are more important than ever. Every help desk connection can be trusted, protected with compliant, conditional access policies, including the ability to support multi-factor authentication—ensuring the identity of both the helper and end user.
2. Use least privilege access.
   Microsoft Intune Endpoint Privilege Management offers a better, more controlled way to manage standard users at scale. The solution enables IT teams to set policies that allow standard users to perform tasks usually reserved for an administrator. Elevated privileges are offered for a discrete task, keeping the scope and time to a minimum. This allows organizations to enable productivity without compromising security. 
   
   Microsoft Tunnel for MAM helps secure mobile access to your private resources by providing secure VPN access at the app level, and just for the apps and browser (including Microsoft Edge) your IT admin explicitly authorizes. For personally owned devices, this means the user can access approved apps, without your company’s data moving onto the user’s personal device. App protection policies protect the data within the apps, preventing unauthorized data leakage to other apps or cloud storage locations.
   
3. Assume breach.
   Microsoft Intune Enterprise Application Management helps proactively minimize the impact of security attacks by streamlining the deployment and updates of Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps. The ability to search for, deploy, and update prepackaged applications through enterprise app catalog simplifies the process of ensuring applications are running the latest and updated version of applications, reducing security risk.
   
   Microsoft Intune Advanced Analytics provides visibility into endpoint performance and proactive identification of anomalies for app related regressions, offering meaningful insights. With the Device query feature, organizations can gain information about the state of a device in real time to help troubleshoot devices issues, respond to security threats, and make informed decisions.

The solutions of the Microsoft Intune Suite helps organizations to improve their security posture, simplify operations, and reduce costs. To learn more about how Microsoft keeping US government customers secure and compliant, see our offerings.

Intune Suite for Government Community Cloud High and Department of Defense will be released at a later date.

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