Mar 11, 2017 10:24 AM EST By Emily Schultz, UniversityHerald Reporter

Microsoft is making another major cloud salvo, making its Azure Cloud platform even more secure. The software company today announced a preview of a new Azure Active Directory management option that can be useful to address data leakage problem. Microsoft made the huge announcement this week.

Microsoft Launches Major Azure Update

As reported earlier by the Microsoft-focused website RedmondMag, which the first to broke the story, the Redmond-based software company this week has released a preview of a new Azure AD management option that is designed to thwart any data leakage when users tried to access SharePoint or OneDrive using noncompliant mobile devices.

Called "Limited Access to SharePoint and OneDrive" by the company in its recent announcement, the new control feature is actually a kind of setting option that lets IT pros specify browser-only access to SharePoint or OneDrive from noncompliant devices. It can also set to block those noncompliant or unwanted devices.

Microsoft has finally figured out a more effective way to deal with data leakage problem. As mentioned earlier on Microsoft Enterprise and Security Blog, when set to browser-only access, the Limited Access Azure AD feature will disable the ability to download, print documents and even synchronize data on those untrusted devices, thus providing air-tight security for those devices

As posted on the Microsoft's blog post, the new Limited Access Azure AD option can be accessed within the SharePoint Admin Center, which is an option within the Microsoft Office 365 Admin Center portal. Microsoft has made lots of improvements to the Azure site, it's now centralized all of its conditional access policies for Azure AD and Microsoft Intune in the Azure Portal.

As for the requirements and availability, the new Limited Access Azure AD feature will require the user to have an Azure AD Premium P1 subscription in place, according to the company's post. Currently, the software company considers conditional access in Azure AD to be a Premium capability only.

Additionally, a subscription to the Microsoft Intune mobile management service is still required to use the Limited Access Azure AD control feature, according to RedmondMag. However, Microsoft has made some important note here, the new Limited Access Azure AD control doesn't work for files that can't be viewed online, like for example in a compressed file or zip files.,

Meanwhile, Bill Baer, product manager for Microsoft SharePoint team, has made some clarification in the recent Microsoft's announcement of the new Limited Access Azure AD preview, saying that the company is strictly referring to the "OneDrive" cloud-based storage service that's used by consumers and not the "OneDrive for Business," used by many companies and organizations.

Azure AD is a comprehensive identity and access management cloud solution that can be useful for roaming enterprise app settings, enabling self-service capabilities, and enabling conditional access for mobile devices. Azure AD also helps secure access to on-premises and cloud applications.

Microsoft Makes Another Major Cloud Killing

In other cloud-related news, Microsoft is reportedly leading the race in the fast-growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) market, with the company's combination of CRM and enterprise application software, Office 365 and other cloud service tools, according to the latest data from Synergy Research Group. The US-based research firm provides quarterly market tracking and segmentation data on IT and Cloud related markets, including market shares and forecasts.

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