Microsoft Defender

Getting started with AI agent runtime protection

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This week is all about AI agent runtime protection in Defender for Endpoint. As more AI agents become available on Windows devices, they are also becoming more capable of interacting with local resources, such as files, applications, and system commands. While those capabilities can provide powerful productivity benefits, they also introduce new security considerations. One of those considerations is prompt injection, where hidden or malicious instructions within content can influence the behavior of an AI agent. To help organizations protect against those threats, Microsoft recently introduced AI agent runtime protection in Defender for Endpoint. This capability provides organizations with the ability to detect potential prompt injection attempts on managed devices and to either audit or block suspicious actions before they can be performed. This post …

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Working with tamper protection on Windows devices to protect security settings

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This week is all about working with tamper protection on Windows devices. Not because it’s something new, but mainly to give it some more attention. It does, by the way, introduce new management functionality. That new functionality is the ability to configure tamper protection on unmanaged devices. So, devices that are not managed by Microsoft Intune, or Configuration Manager, but that are managed via Microsoft Defender for Endpoint security settings management. Besides that, it’s just important to highlight the functionality of tamper protection again, to make sure that the functionality and usage is known. Especially as it’s nowadays enabled by default when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Because it’s enabled by default, people easily forget that it’s configured and what it’s used for. This post will …

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Easily managing Microsoft Defender Antivirus updates channels

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This week is all about managing the updates channels for the different Microsoft Defender Antivirus update types. On one hand to create some awareness for the different update types, and on the other hand to show the latest configurations options for managing the updates channels for those different update types. Microsoft Defender Antivirus contains three different update types and up to six updates channel configuration options. That provides IT administrators with quite some configuration options for the devices within the environment. And starting with the latest service release of Microsoft Intune (2302), the update channel configurations becomes easily configurable via a specific configuration profile. That enables IT administrators to also use different update channels throughout the environment to gradually rollout the different updates of Microsoft …

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Using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Android for protecting the personal profile

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This week another post about Microsoft Defender functionality, but on a completely different platform. This week is all about using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, on Android devices, for protecting the personal profile. And for now, specifically focused on personally owned devices. That protection functionality is focused on providing users with the same level of protection in their personal profile, as provided in their work profile. It provides users – within their personal profile – with malware scanning on user-installed apps, protection from malicious URLs, network protection, and privacy controls. That provides users with better protection and organizations with more control on which devices are allowed to have access to company data. This post will mainly focus on the configuration of that additional protection of the …

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Using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint in app protection policies for Android and iOS

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This week is all about some new and exiting functionality related to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) that was announced around Microsoft Ignite. That new and exiting functionality is that MDE risk signals can now be used in app protection policies for Android and iOS. Those signals are based on the protection against phishing, unsafe network connections (on Android and iOS), and malicious apps (on Android only). That enables the usage of MDE on unmanaged devices for even better protection of work data. This behavior can be achieved by configuring an integration between MDE and Microsoft Intune, to send the required signals to Microsoft Intune, and by configuring an app protection policy, to create a conditional launch for the app, based on the signals provided …

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Deploy Microsoft Defender Application Control policies without forcing a reboot

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This week is all about Microsoft Defender Application Control (MDAC). More specifically, about configuring MDAC policies on Windows 10 devices by using Microsoft Intune without forcing a reboot. MDAC, often still referred to as Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC), restricts application usage by using a feature that was previously already known as configurable Code Integrity (CI) policies. To make the history lesson complete, configurable CI policies was one of the two main components of Windows Defender Device Guard (WDDG). History aside, CI policies help with protecting Windows 10 devices by checking apps based on the attributes of the code signing certificates and the app binaries, the reputation of the app, the identity of the process that initiated the installation (managed installer) and the path from …

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Working with Attack Surface Reduction rules to reduce the attack surface of applications

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This week is al about Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules. ASR rules are originally introduced as one of the four main features of Windows Defender Exploit Guard. Windows Defender Exploit Guard was introduced as a major update to Microsoft Defender Antivirus, in Windows 10 version 1709, and was the successor of Enhance Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET). Nowadays ASR rules are just part of the attack surface reduction controls of Microsoft Defender, but many configuration paths will still refer to Windows Defender Exploit Guard. In this post I’ll have a closer look at configuring ASR rules by using Microsoft Intune. I’ll start with a short introduction about licensing and the different configuration options, followed by the steps for configuring ASR rules and showing the actual configuration. …

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