In recent days, the Microsoft 365 ecosystem was shaken by a significant incident: the unexpected deletion of Intune policies following an update to the security baseline (details here). For those working daily on enterprise endpoint hardening, there’s no need to explain how the sudden loss of compliance policies poses a real threat, especially for organizations with significant data and process responsibilities.
Inside this article:
When an Intune policy disappears – whether due to human error, a bug, or malicious manipulation – the impact can be severe. This is especially true since Intune policies are often the first (and sometimes only) barrier between a vulnerable device and sensitive company data. Just a few minutes without compliance rules can allow a compromised or outdated device to access company data, bypassing otherwise robust protection mechanisms.
The casual way configuration backup is still treated – as opposed to data backup – is an alarm signal we can no longer ignore. Too often, backup plans focus on files, databases, and mailboxes, leaving “unprotected” critical metadata and configurations for productivity, security, and compliance platforms. This conceptual error opens the door to avoidable risks.
Situations like the one we’ve just lived through can become little more than a routine incident, if you have tools natively designed for enterprise configuration backup & management, such as CoreView Configuration Manager . In such scenarios, CoreView Configuration Manager enables you to:
It’s important to remember these risks apply not only to Intune but to all areas of a Microsoft 365 tenant that rely on configurations, including Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, Power BI, OneDrive or Entra ID. For example, think of a SharePoint policy blocking external sharing, accidentally deleted and leaving sensitive data exposed. Or excessive permissions granted to enterprise apps within Entra.
The evolution of threats is well-illustrated by the recent attack from the Midnight Blizzard group, which exploited the lack of governance over enterprise apps in Microsoft tenants to gain access to emails and personal data. In recent years, organizations have made great strides in authentication (MFA, conditional access, passwordless, biometric authentication, and so forth), but this has merely shifted attackers’ focus to other, less visible weak points: permissions, configurations, and endpoint policies. Configurations left unchecked – with no monitoring or backup – have become the new preferred entry point for the most sophisticated adversaries.
The point I make with all our clients is this: security is no longer (only) about accounts or MFA, but about ongoing governance of every aspect of company configuration.
Maturity is needed in considering configurations and metadata as critical assets to be protected, monitored, and backed up with as much – if not more – care as data.
Tools like CoreView One and its Configuration Manager function are no longer “nice to have,” but are now fundamental enablers to:
Part of any cyber security mitigation strategy must now – more than ever – focus on backup and monitoring of configurations as a primary means of resilience. Allocating budget only for data, files, and infrastructure means silently accepting potentially fatal risk.
Only with tools designed to proactively detect problems and autonomously restore the ideal state can we hope to keep up with the speed and sophistication of present and future attacks.
