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Microsoft Intune is a mobile device management solution that supports your organization's Zero Trust journey by securing and managing endpoints that access organizational resources.
Zero Trust isn't a product or service. Instead, it's a modern cybersecurity strategy that assumes no implicit trust, not even within the corporate network. Instead of trusting users, devices, or applications by default, a Zero Trust approach explicitly verifies every access request, continuously assesses risk, and enforces least privilege access across the entire digital estate.
Core principles of Zero Trust include:
| Verify explicitly | Use least privilege access | Assume breach |
|---|---|---|
| Always authenticate and authorize based on all available data points. | Limit user access with Just-In-Time and Just-Enough-Access (JIT/JEA), risk-based adaptive policies, and data protection. | Minimize blast radius and segment access. Verify end-to-end encryption and use analytics to get visibility, drive threat detection, and improve defenses. |
Why manage endpoints for Zero Trust?
The modern enterprise has incredible diversity in endpoints accessing organizational data. Users work from anywhere, from any device, more than at any time in history. This creates a massive attack surface, and endpoints can easily become the weakest link in your Zero Trust security strategy.
While organizations are typically proactive in protecting PCs from vulnerabilities and attacks, mobile devices often go unmanaged and without protections. Gaining visibility into endpoints that access your corporate resources is the first step in your Zero Trust device strategy.
To avoid exposing your data to risk, you need to monitor every endpoint for risks and employ granular access controls to deliver the appropriate level of access based on organizational policy.
How Intune supports Zero Trust principles
You can use Intune to protect both access and data on organization-owned devices and your user's personal devices that they use for work. Intune use of Microsoft Entra as its identity service helps you enforce device compliance policies that align with your organization's requirements while providing reports that help you monitor and achieve your Zero Trust objectives.
| Zero Trust principle | How Intune helps |
|---|---|
| Verify explicitly | Intune supports creation of policies for apps, security settings, device configuration, compliance, Microsoft Entra Conditional Access, and more. These policies become part of the authentication and authorization process of accessing resources. |
| Use least privilege access | Intune simplifies app management with a built-in app experience, including app lifecycle management. You can distribute apps from your private app stores, enable Microsoft 365 apps, deploy Win32 apps, create app protection policies, and manage access to apps and their data. Intune's Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) helps you move your organization's users to run as standard users without administrator rights while enabling those same users to complete tasks and run apps that require elevated privileges. Intune policies for Local Administrator Password Solutions (LAPS) for both Windows and macOS can help you secure and manage the local administrator accounts on your managed devices. |
| Assume breach | Intune integrates with mobile threat defense services, including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and third-party partner services. With these services, you can create policies for endpoint protection that respond to threats, do real-time risk analysis, and automate remediation. When you integrate Intune and Defender, you can use evolving tools like the Vulnerability Remediation Agent for Security Copilot. This agent identifies Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) on your managed devices and provides you with step-by-step guidance you can use to remediate them. |
Zero Trust deployment approach
Building a comprehensive Zero Trust security posture for devices involves progressively implementing layers of protection, from basic app protection to advanced threat detection and data loss prevention. Intune provides a seven-layer deployment framework that helps organizations implement Zero Trust device security in a logical progression.
The deployment approach starts with protecting organizational data in apps on unmanaged devices and advances through device enrollment, compliance enforcement, security configuration, threat monitoring, and data loss prevention. Each layer builds on the previous one, allowing you to start protecting data immediately while planning for more comprehensive device management.
For detailed deployment guidance including prerequisites, licensing requirements, cross-team coordination, and implementation steps, see Zero Trust deployment approach with Microsoft Intune.