App Protection

According to recent research, users are more inclined towards the use of portable/mobile devices. This widespread adoption, along with the global pandemic, has changed the way we operate and communicate, both personally and professionally.

Many industries are adapting to remote work, enabled by technology that makes even things like remote patient consultation & monitoring, virtual classes, and food ordering & tracking via mobile devices possible. Additionally, many organisations have adopted bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy as workers want to perform their tasks at home and in the office seamlessly, without switching devices. This movement towards a device-dependent workforce requires security teams to take a closer look at how they’re managing and securing the devices, apps, and data.

Whether it’s a personal or corporate-owned device, security teams are tasked with securing enterprise data on them by enforcing corporate policies via a mobile device management (MDM) or a mobile application management (MAM) solution. Microsoft Intune’s Mobile Application Management (MAM) provides the ability to secure supported mobile applications (i.e., Microsoft’s mobile apps), without the complexity of managing the whole device. This ensures the enterprise data is secured while leaving the personal data of the user untouched. The uptake of BYOD has also been a driving factor for the adoption of MAM.

The benefits of using App Protection are:

Protect enterprise data at the application level
No impact to end user’s personal data since enterprise policies don't apply when using the app in a personal context
Control of data movement between managed and unmanaged apps
Additional verification before allowing access to apps
Wipe enterprise data in case of device theft or when the use leaves the organisation

App Protection can be enabled for apps in the following ways:

Natively integrated into Microsoft first-party apps
Integrated into apps during development by using the Intune SDK
Using Intune app wrapping tool for compatible apps when access to app source code isn’t available

If your organisation has invested in Microsoft Intune, you have what it takes to have this implemented in your enterprise.