#Modern Workplace

Historically, safeguarding proprietary information mandated total control over the physical hardware. However, with the shift toward SaaS-based apps and the rise of remote work, the paradigm has moved toward securing the data itself rather than the device. Staff and external partners are no longer restricted to corporate-owned and managed Windows devices, thanks to the robust controls available within Microsoft 365. Organizations can now focus on a versatile strategy that closes visibility gaps without overstepping onto personal or third-party hardware. Microsoft is bolstering the defensive features within   Edge for Business, Entra, Intune, and Purview . Recent enhancements to profile handling and authentication now enable firms to insulate browser-centric tasks on PCs governed by other entities. These advancements synchronize Purview’s real-time data oversight with Intune’s structured deployment frameworks, allowing administrators to deploy a unified security blanket rather ...

Ever been in a situation when the state of the device is so bad, so unusable that it feels like you have exhausted all options and there is no hope? I think it is safe to say that most of us in the world of endpoint management, would have such days at some point in our lives. I recently delt with a device that was in a deadlock state. To give some more context, here is a snapshot of what I was dealing with - 1. The device reset had failed from Microsoft Intune and as part of the process was also deleted from the admin portal. 2. To make matters worse, the device object was deleted from Entra ID as well. (Don't ask why, it's just the way it is.:-) ). 3. The enrolled user had standard permissions and in order to elevate the permissions, one would need either a GA role or LAPS. While LAPS was configured, due to step 2, there was no way to retrieve the password, even through Graph. 4. GA wouldn't work as well as the device had lost trust with Entra ID. 5. Even if you rebooted i...

I recently encountered an issue as part of a project involving Entra hybrid join for existing domain joined devices and Co-management where devices stopped connecting to corporate wireless access points automatically. The devices would complain about missing credentials, resulting in authentication errors and eventually give up on connecting to the corporate Wi-Fi. Here is a snapshot of one such error - The environment is configured with Cisco ISE as the RADIUS solution with an authentication policy relying on PEAP MSCHAPv2 as the authentication protocol. The logs on the Cisco side reflected the same ' Internal authentication error ' as seen in the event viewer of the endpoints. This was strange at first because there was nothing set up in Intune or otherwise as part of the Co-management configuration that would interfere with the WiFi settings in general. On further investigation, it was discovered that the issue could very well be related to Credential Guard on the devices. ...

While attempting to upgrade my Surface device to 25H2 in my tenant, I constantly encountered issues. The error in the default Windows Update report was not really helpful. The error just indicated that the installation was being cancelled by the user and that it needed attention. Which is quite bizarre, because I had the device kept switched on and connected to the internet for a long period of time so the error didn't make sense to me. I started investigating this and realized that I needed more information to get to the bottom of the error. That is when I realized that I hadn't configured the collection of the Windows diagnostic or telemetry data correctly. While this is not a necessity, nonetheless highly recommended. Here is why.. Windows telemetry helps in improving security and compatibility, identifying and troubleshooting issues, monitoring device performance and reliability through collection of specific data points. These are classified across - Service-based data fro...

Back in January, 2024, when I first wrote about my experience working with Global Secure Access (GSA) for Android OS, GSA was still in preview. Since then, most of the configuration in GSA has been moved into GA, including support for macOS, and this is what I will be covering in this blog. First a quick refresher on what GSA is really all about. Global Secure Access (GSA) is Microsoft’s unified Security Service Edge (SSE) solution that combines Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access, giving identity-aware access control (for internet, SaaS, and private resources) without relying solely on VPNs. Using GSA one can guard against threats like token replay by leveraging a combination of compliant network and conditional access policies. A compliant network check is a conditional access control that one can configure so that access to resources is only allowed when the client is connected via the Global Secure Access infrastructure (i.e. traffic is routed throug...