Defender for Endpoint Vulnerability assessment of apps for Intune enrolled iOS devices

Source:Microsoft

While going through the Defender for Endpoint configuration in my tenant, I realized that I had Vulnerability management partially configured for iOS devices and therefore, decided to put things in order. Before I dive into the specifics, here is a little something on what MDE Vulnerability assessment of apps is really all about.

As part of MDE, Vulnerability management helps in identifying, assessing, remediating vulnerabilities across all onboarded devices. It delivers asset visibility, intelligent assessments, and built-in remediation tools for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and network devices. With the help of capabilities like Microsoft threat intelligence, breach likelihood predictions, business contexts, and devices assessments, Defender Vulnerability Management continuously prioritizes the biggest vulnerabilities on your most critical assets and provides security recommendations to mitigate risk.

In case of iOS specifically, vulnerability assessments supports both OS and apps vulnerabilities and is available for enrolled (MDM) and unenrolled (MAM) devices. However, vulnerability assessment of apps is only for enrolled (MDM) devices and this feature will be the focus for this blog.

Configure the vulnerability assessment of apps in Intune for iOS

1. Sign-in to the Microsoft Intune admin center

2. Browse to Endpoint Security > Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and enable the following:

Enable App sync for iOS/iPadOS devices - For Supervised devices (Optional)

Enable App sync for iOS/iPadOS devices - For Unsupervised devices

3. Go to Apps > App configuration policies > Add > Managed devices.

4. Give the policy a name, Platform > iOS/iPadOS.

5. Select Microsoft Defender for Endpoint as the target app.

6. On the Settings page, select Use configuration designer and add DefenderTVMPrivacyMode as the key and set the following values -

Note: I have other settings configured in the screenshot above which you are most welcome to configure, however, please do so at your own risk. :-)

For users with key DefenderTVMPrivacyMode set as False, Defender for Endpoint will send the list of apps installed on the device for vulnerability assessment. It is enabled by default for supervised devices.

7. Assign the profile to targeted devices/users.

End user and Admin experience

Once the MDE app gets the policy on iOS devices, processing will start. On opening the MDE app, the visibility of the apps installed will show under what Organization can see under the privacy settings.

Vulnerabilities found on the devices will start showing up in the Defender Vulnerability Management dashboard which can take up to 24 hours to complete.

At this stage you can decide the action plan to fix the vulnerability. A good way will be to request remediation which will create a security task in Intune that can be used as part of the triage process.

The TVM events are captured and can be pulled through Advanced hunting queries as well.

Unfortunately, as of writing this blog you cannot initiate any actions against the TVM events like restricting app execution as these are not supported on mobile devices.

Source:Microsoft

However, all is not lost. If the vulnerability is related to a version and a fix is available in form a security update, then administrators can still take action by blocking, wiping (not recommended), warning the user of the app in question using Intune. This is done through the Conditional launch in the App Protection Policy (APP) in Intune.

Once the app checks-in, the APP will apply and the end user will see the warning message to update the application.

Final thoughts..

It would have been really cool if one could perform additional device actions directly from the Defender portal against the TVM events through the advanced hunting queries thus eliminating the need to carry out actions using Intune. Nonetheless, vulnerability assessment of apps as part of MDE vulnerability management is a great way to address critical vulnerabilities though Continuous asset discovery and monitoring, Risk-based intelligent prioritization and Remediation and tracking. Until next time..