Microsoft has geared its Intune enterprise device management platform to work under new features within Apple’s macOS Catalina. In a blog post, the company has announced Microsoft Intune features for the latest Mac platform, leveraging the new Apple Business Manager experience.
In the post, Microsoft says Catalina has upped Apple’s game in terms of management of apps and devices, allowing a new environment for app development on macOS. Looking specifically at Microsoft Intune, the company has it has been investing in generating more deployment options for IT admins on macOS.
As an overview of the changes Microsoft has made to align with macOS Catalina, here’s the list:
- Apple volume-purchased (VPP) apps support for macOS.
- App wrapping tool support for 64-bits and macOS Catalina (10.15).
- Web clip install support for macOS.
- Expanded support for up to 2,000 Apple VPP tokens per Intune tenant.
- Protect app inventory data on personal macOS devices.
Support for VPP apps was important. With Catalina, Apple revealed a requirement that states all software on macOS distributed outside the App Store must be notarized by January 2020. Gatekeeper sees a notarized app and now it is secure and free from malware.
Microsoft Intune supports Apple VPP on iOS and iPadOS since earlier this month. Now admins can deploy apps in the App Store for macOS, such as Microsoft Office applications.
Another change in macOS Catalina was Apple only supporting 64-bit binaries on the platform past version 10.15. Microsoft Intune users can now leverage the company’s app wrapping tool (v1.2) to match the requirement. The tool is available on GitHub here.
Derived Credentials on iOS
Last week, Microsoft Intune received support for derived credentials on Apple’s iOS mobile platform. Microsoft says Intune support of derived credentials is compliant with the requirements of SP 800-157. To ensure this support, the company partnered with Interceded, DISA Purebred, and Entrust Datacard.
