Configuring Intune Permissions in Defender Portal for Endpoint security

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When it comes to implementing least privilege model for Intune permissions, the most common way is to use the role-based access control (aka RBAC). As a focus for this article, I wanted to touch upon the permissions required for managing endpoint security related settings in Intune, but configured using Defender. Consider a scenario where security and endpoint teams are different. While Endpoint team will normally focus on the administration of managed enterprise devices using Microsoft Intune admin center, security analysts will focus on security aspect of resources using the Defender portal. The real challenge comes, when the two roles start to merge or overlap. This is where strong governance for access permissions can play a crucial role. While implementing RBAC in the respective administration portals is the recommended way to address this, in the off chance that an organization has not implemented this, the relevant permissions, for endpoint security in Intune in particular, can still be configured using Defender portal alone. This is also perfect in configurations where devices are not enrolled in Intune and 'Security settings management' feature is used instead.



To do this, simply carry out the steps below -

1. Navigate to Microsoft Defender admin portal.
2. Go to Settings > Endpoints > Configuration management.


3. Click the Add Azure AD Group, and add the Entra ID group containing the list of users that need administrative access to the endpoint security settings in Intune.

4. Once added, it can take 5-10 minutes for the permissions to replicate. The permissions will be modeled against Endpoint Security Manager built-in role in Intune which manages security and compliance features such as security baselines, device compliance, conditional access, and Microsoft Defender ATP. This will mean that not only in addition to default read permissions that get assigned, the targeted set of users will also get 'Write' access to relevant endpoint security settings as well.




Here are snapshots of the permissions available under Endpoint Security Manager built-in role in Intune.




These users will not be able to create or modify any policies outside of the endpoint security settings, but will be able to create and modify settings that are allowed under the remit of Endpoint Security Manager built-in role.




That's it. The above configuration ensures consistent permissions across both Defender and Intune admin portals. This way Security analysts can leverage Intune for managing endpoint security settings with minimal RBAC implementation, whilst maintaining the least privilege model. Thanks for reading. Until next time..

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