News

macOS Conditional Access Support Added to Azure Active Directory

• By Kurt Mackie
• 11/15/2017

Azure Active Directory now supports the setting of macOS device conditional access policies using Microsoft Intune, Microsoft announced on Tuesday.

Azure AD's support for macOS device conditional access policies has reached "general availability" status, meaning that the capability is ready for use in production environments. Organization can use Intune, Microsoft's mobile management service, to manage macOS devices and set compliance policies for them, including limiting application access based on those policies.

Microsoft also expanded browser support. It added support for the Google Chrome browser, in addition to Apple Safari, when setting conditional access policies for macOS devices. The Microsoft Teams collaboration service is now a supported application, too. Microsoft Office 2016 for macOS version 15.34 and newer versions of that productivity suite additionally are supported.

The conditional access support requires using macOS 10.11 or higher versions of that operating system. With general availability, the Microsoft AutoUpdate for macOS service will now automatically update the Intune Company Portal when it's been deployed on devices.

Also reaching general availability this week is the ability to set application-based conditional access policies for iOS and Android devices. For instance, policies can set to restrict users to use only supported client apps. Intune controls are available to set policies for "Office 365 and other Azure AD-connected cloud apps," the announcement explained.

In related news, Microsoft added a new "Devices" area (known as a "blade") in the Azure Portal, which is used for management tasks. The Devices blade shows device-related settings, as well as all of the devices that can be controlled through conditional access policies. The Devices blade, which has reached general availability status, also lets IT pros "find BitLocker keys" for devices that are Azure AD joined.