Mobile devices as endpoints to corporate information have taken the world by storm. The “mobile first” mantra refers to the preferential use of a mobile device before a desktop or laptop. Have phone, will work (or even run the company). The potential of the device to enable new ways of working has to be safeguarded from that which could undermine both current execution and the integrity of long-range plans.

In the Microsoft 365 world, this is the role of Intune Mobile Threat Defense. The service looks at what’s happening on devices, with applications, with the content of messages, with the types of network traffic going through the device … and makes a determination whether all is well or starting to go rotten (slowly or quickly). When a threat is detected – which can be in collaboration with another mobile threat analysis vendor – new protections are enforced to reduce risk, stop data loss, and contain the threat. These could be conditional access policies, such that the end user has to verify that they are the person requesting access to the information through a second factor or means of authentication. Or it could be more draconian, whereby data is locked and blocked from access by anyone or anything. If the device can be remediated – via a secondary user authentication action or a device update that contains the threat – everything goes back to how it is supposed to work.

The Microsoft Intune Team just announced a new integration with BETTER Mobile for leveraging signals from BETTER ActiveShield to trigger Intune policies around conditional access and other mitigation policies. Current Intune customers can get 50 free licenses for 18 months from BETTER Mobile, to try out the integration.