The business team of the social networking service, Skype has announced that Skype for Business now secures messages and chats as well as improve mobility with the integration of Intune.
According to the team, Intune supports mobile application management (MAM) and conditional access capabilities for Skype for Business mobile apps which enable online customers to protect and manage applications and associated data.
“An integral aspect of enabling true productivity is ensuring that employees can communicate and collaborate from wherever they are, on their favorite devices. At the same time, keeping sensitive corporate information secure is critical”, kype for Business team says.
“With Skype for Business, we are committed to enabling productivity on the go for end users, as well as providing IT, the tools to protect and manage the applications and associated data”, the team adds.
The team explains some of the core Intune MAM and conditional access capabilities that can help users enable managed productivity with Skype for Business.
-Manage and prevent data loss from Skype for Business apps using Intune
Skype says that with an increasing amount of communication taking place over messages and chats, it is important that IT is able to secure the corporate data being shared, adding that Intune’s mobile device and application management capabilities enable an end-to-end solution for protecting and managing corporate assets.
Now this extends to Skype for Business apps on iOS and Android, so that IT can set policies to proactively control how the app is getting used, Skype adds citing example that a user can keep employees productive by allowing copying information between managed apps, such as Outlook and Skype for Business, but not to unmanaged ones, also if the mobile device is lost or an employee leaves the company, you can also selectively wipe corporate data while keeping personal apps and files intact.
The team further states that another policy users can set is to require a PIN to access the apps. “We’ve made sure that these IT policies protect your organization’s data without impeding the user experience. As an example, the same PIN can be used for all the managed apps, and incoming calls can be answered quickly without entering the PIN.”
“These application management capabilities with Intune are available with or without Intune’s device management feature. MAM without device enrollment can be particularly valuable if you are using other MDM solutions to manage the devices within your organization or in scenarios where IT is not able to enroll the devices”, the Skype for Business Team says.
-Conditional access support for Skype for Business Online
“We are also announcing support for conditional access policies with Intune for the Skype for Business iOS and Android apps. Conditional access allows IT to restrict access to the apps from only compliant iOS and Android devices”, Skype stated, citing the example of conditional access policies, with which users can restrict access to the app from jail-broken devices or require a minimum OS version.
The team notes that MAM without device enrollment and conditional access functionality require modern authentication to be enabled for Skype for Business Online, and that it is currently disabled by default, adding that users who are not already using Intune should try it for free with the Enterprise Mobility Suite.