Microsoft Defender for Android (currently USA only)

[britechguy]

I had not even heard the slightest chatter that Microsoft was planning to extend Defender to the Android platform. Well, they have:

Microsoft Defender for Android on the Google Play Store

 

[Sky-Knight]

Defender is the brand name Microsoft is associating with all security anything in their ecosystem.

I have an entire Defender panel that encompasses security settings for Azure and M365 concerns, that same panel expands to handle Defender for Endpoint on the desktops if you license for it. So I assume that this move is just to give some compliance controls over mobile devices.

 

[britechguy]

anything in their ecosystem.

That being the thing, Android has not generally been considered "in their ecosystem." Hence my slight surprise.

 

[Sky-Knight]

That being the thing, Android has not generally been considered "in their ecosystem." Hence my slight surprise.

InTune is an MDM platform, iOS and Android devices are actually in the ecosystem because large enterprises need compliance reports filled. So a Defender mobile app is quite welcome in those spheres.

Operating systems and browsers supported by Microsoft Intune

Lists supported device platforms and browsers for Intune device management

docs.microsoft.com

 

[britechguy]

So a Defender mobile app is quite welcome in those spheres.

Which I agree about. I've actually installed it on my own phone.

You're reaching about Android being considered "a part of the Microsoft ecosystem."

 

[Sky-Knight]

Which I agree about. I've actually installed it on my own phone.

You're reaching about Android being considered "a part of the Microsoft ecosystem."

Microsoft considers it as such, they support both iOS and Android on mobile platforms heavily and M365 is dependent on support of those platforms. It's one of the many reasons why I push M365 over GSuite. Google can't keep themselves from canceling their own products long enough to actually support Windows desktops correctly, much less anything Apple offers.

P.S. Microsoft is a huge contributor to both Android and Chromium. The latter shouldn't be too much of a shock since New Edge happened... but still. If MS is paying their own devs to write code for Android, you could consider the OS theirs too. Just depends on how you slice up ownership of an open source project.

https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/committer:microsoft

 

[britechguy]

Microsoft considers it as such,

And I consider myself the King of Roumania!

In any meaningful sense, Android, Linux, iOS, and MacOS cannot be considered part of Microsoft's ecosystem. They have made forays into alien territory. That doesn't make it theirs. If that's what qualifies, then the entire concept of anyone having "an ecosystem" ceases to have any reasonable meaning at all.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Smart Phones are considered essential for business platforms now. Even tablets. And security....tight security....is getting more and more important these days.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium is our standard "push" for our clients who are on 365. I do not want to even deal with clients on lesser licensing. 365BP includes Azure directory....and you put agents on each client (InTune/Company Portal) to manage them, and several months ago Microsoft added centrally managed antivirus protection to the 365 BP suite.
So now you can manage not only who...but what devices....are allowed to access "stuff in the tenant". Once those devices say....pass a minimal requirement...such as disk encryption, and...antivirus.

So while *nix, mac, 'n 'driod aren't native to Microsoft....these days they are part of the stack of user devices that access 365 stuff. So being fully able to secure them all in a single pane of glass is....excellent! A "win win" for us MSPs too!

After a bit more testing and learning it....pretty soon I'll be replacing our current Bitdefender via Gravity Zone...via our RMM, with..this 365BP antivirus.

 

[britechguy]

aren't native to Microsoft....these days they are part of the stack of user devices that access 365 stuff.

About which you'll get no argument from me, and never have I argued otherwise.

All I have been trying to say is that if something is "not native to" then it's really not "part of {insert company not native to's} ecosystem." It's in the mix, it accesses things, it's important to protect, but unless you are entirely in charge of it, while it's part of "the ecosystem one is working in" it's not part of *your* ecosystem (when the "you" is a corporate entity that's "in the business").

Tech companies routinely create things intended to reach beyond their own ecosystems. Those don't magically annex the ecosystems of others.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Semanics and again it boils down to how you define ownership. Open Source projects don't really have owners, they have managers. Google manages Android, as well as contributing to it. Microsoft contributes to it too, along with many other companies and individuals.

Note there's a difference between Android, and Pixel. The latter is solidly Google, the former is not.

 

[britechguy]

Well, I guess you're right in that we're arguing semantics.

I know of very few people who would not class Android as "Google's Baby," regardless of other contributors. In the world of open source, there's virtually never "purity" when it comes to who's contributed, but there is when it comes to who is, for all practical intents and purposes, the owner/primary manager of those projects.

I certainly consider Android a Google product that has been open-sourced rather than an open-source project to which Google is the primary contributor and manager. Conversely, I consider GitHub an open-source project that was acquired by Microsoft.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@britechguy Which is very true for today, but given what MS is doing to Android and Chromium specifically, overtime that line is likely to get increasingly blurry for these two projects specifically.

That is, unless Microsoft doesn't just fork it, rebrand it, and do their own thing. That's quite possible too.

The Android brand is definitely Google's and always will be after all.

 

[britechguy]

That is, unless Microsoft doesn't just fork it, rebrand it, and do their own thing.

And were that to occur, and the "presenting face" and underlying code changed sufficiently to make the resulting product "not cross compatible" with its origin code, that's another thing entirely.

Yes, things can definitely be blurry. But I don't think that Microsoft creating a version of any of its products (Office being the most obvious one) that runs under other OSes and on other hardware platforms makes those OSes and their ecosystems part of Microsoft's. They've just put a tiny pin on a huge map over which they have no control whatsoever. (Or, in the case of Android, no significant control when compared with its primary manager - Google).