How to deploy Microsoft 365 Apps security baseline using Intune

 

Microsoft releases security baseline for Microsoft 365 apps every 6 months keeping in with the release cadence of Microsoft 365 apps semi-annual channel which normally happens in June and December. At the time of writing this blog, following are the available deployment methods:

Cloud policies - Can be deployed with the Office cloud policy service for policies in HKCU.  Cloud policies apply to a user on any device accessing files in Office apps with their AAD account.

ADMX policies - Can be deployed with Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM) for both HKCU and HKLM policies. These settings are written to the same place as Group Policy, but managed from the cloud in MEM using either Administrative templates or the settings catalog.

Group Policy - Can be deployed with on premise AD DS to deploy Group Policy Objects (GPO) to users and computers.

Note: Depending on the deployment method, registry keys will be written accordingly and they will be observed in order of precedence: Office cloud policies will override ADMX/Group Policies which will override end user settings in the Trust Center.

Unlike MDM security baselines that are available natively within Intune, one cannot deploy the Microsoft 365 Apps security baseline the same way. Sure one can use Administrative templates or the settings catalog to deploy, but this will require configuring each setting from the baseline manually. 

Group Policy analytics migration

Group policy analytics within the reporting section in Intune has been available for some time now. It allowed organizations to generate a report, assess the readiness of each setting and evaluate the options to implement them using Intune. Like the one shown below:

As handy as it may seem, this only gave an assessment report and no direct means to migrate the settings in Intune, until now. Microsoft has now made it possible to import the GPOs and then magically migrate the available or supported settings over to settings catalog in Intune. Let's see how this is done.

1. Download the security baseline from here if not already done.

2. Unpack the contents and get ready to sign-in to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center

3. Browse to Devices > Group Policy analytics (preview) > Import

4. Click on Import and select the xml for the GPO that you want to import.

5. Next to the GPO that you want in your Settings Catalog profile, select the Migrate checkbox. You can select one GPO or many GPOs.

6. Select the settings that you want to migrate and hit next.

Note: It is recommended to review the Group Policy settings before migrating them all. It's possible some settings may not apply to cloud-based policy management or don't apply to cloud native endpoints, like Windows 10/11 devices.

7. Confirm the configuration settings and hit next.

8. Give a name and hit next.

9. Depending on the category of the settings, either assign to user based group or devices.

End result

Once the device syncs, the policies will be applied and the same can be verified both locally on the device and in the MEM admin console.

Per policy setting status can be viewed from the MEM admin console as well.

Conclusion

The migrate feature work on best effort basis. It takes the parsed data from the imported Group Policy object (GPO) and translates it to a relevant setting in the Settings Catalog, if the setting exists. Microsoft has infact stated that they are working on adding Microsoft 365 Apps security baseline in Intune, but until that happens, I think using the Migrate option under Group policy analytics is an excellent way to migrate the on-prem GPOs into a cloud based source like Intune. However, it is recommended that GPOs are assessed first before being migrated as some of the settings may be legacy and meant for domain joined devices and may not be suited or supported for Azure AD joined devices.