#Modern Workplace

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Device Control protects against data loss by monitoring and controlling media use of removable storage devices and USB drives. It is part of the Attack Surface Reduction profiles which enables auditing, read, write or execute access to removable storage. Once you enable Device Control policy, you can find the device control report in the Microsoft 365 security center . However, please note that the device control report can have a 12-hour delay from the time a media connection occurs to the time the event is reflected in the card or in the domain list. I recently came across a situation where there was a requirement for allowing the use of USB screen sharing solutions like Barco Clickshare . They are normally used in VC Meeting rooms and the process for activation requires plugging them into a laptop and running the application executable. To ensure the use of such devices, you either disable the Device Control policy or simply create a whitelist. C...

Recently, I needed to deploy Visio & Project as standalone apps using Intune. While Intune supports this, the installation and upgrade can be an issue if any office apps are found to be running in background. At the time of writing this blog, there is no option available in the default settings to close the apps. However, such customizations can be added using XML data instead. While one can use Office Deployment Tool to create a configuration xml, the same can be achieved using https://config.office.com . Let's see how this is done. Creating the XML Head over to  https://config.office.com Click on Create a New Configuration Select the Visio app according to your license requirements. I am using Visio Online plan 2 . Select the relevant update channel & the version. In my case, I am using Current channel with latest version. Select the additional apps that you want. In my case, I am excluding both OneDrive Groove and OneDrive Desktop . Select the relev...