Microsoft Defender ATP: Protect Printers and Flash Drives

Microsoft Defender ATP: Protect Printers and Flash Drives

Microsoft continues to bet heavily every day on its antivirus, Microsoft Defender, better known as Windows Defender. Over time it has become one of the best antivirus that we can have for our PC to protect our data and, in addition, it is installed by default with the operating system. Now, its business version has received new improvements for the protection of printers and external storage devices.

Today, teleworking has become commonplace in the business world. For this reason, it is normal that more and more employees go to work remotely instead of in person. As a result, printers and removable storage devices are now being targeted more than ever by hackers to obtain data from companies and their daily business operations.

What’s new in Microsoft Defender ATP

So that we can contain and address this increased security exposure of these elements, Microsoft has taken it upon themselves to add new features to its Microsoft Defender ATP antivirus, the enterprise version of its Windows Defender antivirus. Among them we find a new protection for printers and external storage devices.

Microsoft Defender ATP

This new functionality will allow access restrictions to removable storage devices and blocking of print jobs through non-corporate or non-approved printers. And, although these devices will help us increase our productivity, they also represent a threat to business data and serve as a potential entry point for malware and viruses.

Removable Device Protection Now Available

According to Microsoft, it is providing new access control capabilities for removable storage systems in Windows and which are now available . This complements existing device control protection in scenarios such as device installation, Endpoint DLP removable storage, and BitLocker removable storage.

This new removable storage protection function will help us to audit, allow and prevent read, write or execute access to the removable storage device, depending on various properties of the device. For example, data such as Descriptive Name, Serial Number, Vendor ID, among others.

Regarding Windows printer protection, the public preview for Microsoft Defender ATP is now available. This new feature will allow us to prevent users from printing through a non-corporate network printer or an unapproved UBS printer. This will add a new additional layer of security and data protection to perform work from home or other remote work scenarios.

Support for jailbroken iOS devices

Already last month Microsoft began to incorporate support for detecting jailbroken iOS devices in Microsoft Defender ATP. Likewise, it also included mobile application management support for Android and iOS devices that are not registered in Intune. And is that when a user jailbreak their iOS device, they are obtaining full write access and high execution permissions. With this, you remove all restrictions imposed by Apple for the installation of applications.

With no restrictions, you can later install applications that can be especially dangerous, as well as bypass important security updates, because you are also exposed to possible attacks.