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Use Microsoft Intune policy to manage rules for attack surface reduction

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When Defender antivirus is in use on your Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices, you can use Microsoft Intune endpoint security policies for attack surface reduction to manage those settings on your devices.

You can use attack surface reduction (ASR) policies to reduce the attack surface of devices by minimizing the places where your organization is vulnerable to cyberthreats and attacks. Intune ASR policies support the following profiles:

  • Attack Surface Reduction Rules: Use this profile to target behaviors that malware and malicious apps typically use to infect computers. Examples of these behaviors include use of executable files and scripts in Office apps, web mail that attempts to download or run files, and obfuscated or otherwise suspicious scripts behaviors that apps don't usually initiate during normal day-to-day work.

  • Device Control: Use this profile to allow, block, and otherwise secure removable media through controls that can monitor and help prevent threats from unauthorized peripherals from compromising your devices. and control features to help prevent threats in unauthorized peripherals from compromising your devices.

For more information, see Overview of attack surface reduction in the Windows Threat protection documentation.

Attack surface reduction policies are found in the Endpoint security node of the Microsoft Intune admin center.

Applies to:

Prerequisites for Attack surface reduction profiles

  • Devices must run Windows 10 or Windows 11
  • Defender antivirus must be the primary antivirus on the device

Support for Security Management for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint:

When you use Security Management for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to support devices you've onboarded to Defender without enrollment with Intune, Attack surface reduction applies to devices that run Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server. For more information, see ASR rules supported operating systems in the Windows Threat protection documentation.

Support for Configuration Manager clients:

This scenario is in preview and requires use of Configuration Manager current branch version 2006 or later.

  • Set up tenant attach for Configuration Manager devices - To support deploying attack surface reduction policy to devices managed by Configuration Manager, configure tenant attach. Set up of tenant attach includes configuring Configuration Manager device collections to support endpoint security policies from Intune.

    To set up tenant attach, see Configure tenant attach to support endpoint protection policies.

Role-based access controls (RBAC)

For guidance on assigning the right level of permissions and rights to manage Intune attack surface reduction policy, see Assign-role-based-access-controls-for-endpoint-security-policy.

Attack surface reduction profiles

The available profiles for attack surface reduction policy depend on the platform you select.

Note

Beginning in April 2022, new profiles for Attack surface reduction policy have begun to release. When a new profile becomes available, it uses the same name of the profile it replaces and includes the same settings as the older profile but in the newer settings format as seen in the Settings Catalog. Your previously created instances of these profiles remain available to use and edit, but all new instances you create will be in the new format. The following profiles have been updated:

  • Attack surface reduction rules (April 5, 2022)
  • Exploit protection (April 5, 2022)
  • Device control (May 23, 2022)
  • App and browser isolation (April 18, 2023)

Devices managed by Intune

Platform: Windows:

Profiles for this platform are supported on Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices enrolled with Intune.

  • Attack Surface Reduction Rules

Available profiles for this platform include:

  • Attack Surface Reduction Rules – Configure settings for attack surface reduction rules that target behaviors that malware and malicious apps typically use to infect computers, including:

    • Executable files and scripts used in Office apps or web mail that attempt to download or run files
    • Obfuscated or otherwise suspicious scripts
    • Behaviors that apps don't usually start during normal day-to-day work

    Reducing your attack surface means offering attackers fewer ways to perform attacks.

    Merge behavior for Attack surface reduction rules in Intune:

    Attack surface reduction rules support a merger of settings from different policies, to create a superset of policy for each device. Settings that aren't in conflict are merged, while settings that are in conflict aren't added to the superset of rules. Previously, if two policies included conflicts for a single setting, both policies were flagged as being in conflict, and no settings from either profile would be deployed.

    Attack surface reduction rule merge behavior is as follows:

    • Attack surface reduction rules from the following profiles are evaluated for each device the rules apply to:
      • Devices > Configuration policy > Endpoint protection profile > Microsoft Defender Exploit Guard > Attack Surface Reduction
      • Endpoint security > Attack surface reduction policy > Attack surface reduction rules
      • Endpoint security > Security baselines > Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Baseline > Attack Surface Reduction Rules.
    • Settings that don't have conflicts are added to a superset of policy for the device.
    • When two or more policies have conflicting settings, the conflicting settings aren't added to the combined policy, while settings that don't conflict are added to the superset policy that applies to a device.
    • Only the configurations for conflicting settings are held back.

  • Device Control – With settings for device control, you can configure devices for a layered approach to secure removable media. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides multiple monitoring and control features to help prevent threats in unauthorized peripherals from compromising your devices.

    Intune profiles for device control support:

    To learn more about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint device control, see the following articles in the Defender documentation:

  • App and browser isolation – Manage settings for Windows Defender Application Guard (Application Guard), as part of Defender for Endpoint. Application Guard helps to prevent old and newly emerging attacks and can isolate enterprise-defined sites as untrusted while defining what sites, cloud resources, and internal networks are trusted.

    To learn more, see Application Guard in the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint documentation.

  • Application control - Application control settings can help mitigate security threats by restricting the applications that users can run and the code that runs in the System Core (kernel). Manage settings that can block unsigned scripts and MSIs, and restrict Windows PowerShell to run in Constrained Language Mode.

    To learn more, see Application Control in the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint documentation.

    Note

    If you use this setting, AppLocker CSP behavior currently prompts end user to reboot their machine when a policy is deployed.

  • Exploit Protection - Exploit protection settings can help protect against malware that uses exploits to infect devices and spread. Exploit protection consists of many mitigations that can apply to either the operating system or individual apps.

  • Web protection (Microsoft Edge Legacy) – Settings you can manage for Web protection in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint configure network protection to secure your machines against web threats. When you integrate Microsoft Edge or third-party browsers like Chrome and Firefox, web protection stops web threats without a web proxy and can protect machines while they're away or on-premises. Web protection stops access to:

    • Phishing sites
    • Malware vectors
    • Exploit sites
    • Untrusted or low-reputation sites
    • Sites that you blocked by using a custom indicator list.

    To learn more, see Web protection in the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint documentation.

Devices managed by Defender for Endpoint security settings management

When you use the Security Management for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint scenario to support devices managed by Defender that aren't enrolled with Intune, you can use the Windows platform to manage settings on devices that run Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server. For more information, see ASR rules supported operating systems in the Windows Threat protection documentation.

Profiles supported for this scenario include:

  • Attack Surface Reduction Rules - Configure settings for attack surface reduction rules that target behaviors that malware and malicious apps typically use to infect computers, including:
    • Executable files and scripts used in Office apps or web mail that attempt to download or run files.
    • Obfuscated or otherwise suspicious scripts.
    • Behaviors that apps don't usually start during normal day-to-day work Reducing your attack surface means offering attackers fewer ways to perform attacks.

Important

Only the Attack surface reduction rules profile is supported by the Security Management for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. All other Attack surface reduction profiles aren't supported.

Devices managed by Configuration Manager

Attack surface reduction

Support for devices managed by Configuration Manager is in Preview.

Manage attack surface reduction settings for Configuration Manager devices, when you use tenant attach.

Policy path:

  • Endpoint security > Attach surface reduction > Windows (ConfigMgr)

Profiles:

  • App and Browser Isolation(ConfigMgr)
  • Attack Surface Reduction Rules(ConfigMgr)
  • Exploit Protection(ConfigMgr)(preview)
  • Web Protection (ConfigMgr)(preview)

Required version of Configuration Manager:

  • Configuration Manager current branch version 2006 or later

Supported Configuration Manager device platforms:

  • Windows 10 and later (x86, x64, ARM64)
  • Windows 11 and later (x86, x64, ARM64)

Reusable settings groups for Device control profiles

In public preview, Device control profiles support use of reusable settings groups to help manage settings for the following settings groups on devices for the Windows platform:

  • Printer device: The following device control profile settings are available for printer device:

    • PrimaryId
    • PrinterConnectionID
    • VID_PID

    For information about printer device options, see Printer Protection Overview in the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint documentation.

  • Removable storage: The following device control profile settings are available in for removable storage:

    • Device class
    • Device ID
    • Hardware ID
    • Instance ID
    • Primary ID
    • Product ID
    • Serial number
    • Vendor ID
    • Vendor ID and Product ID

    For information about removable storage options, see Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Device Control Removable Storage Access Control in the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint documentation.

When you use a reusable settings group with a device control profile, you configure Actions to define how the settings in those groups are used.

Each rule you add to the profile can include both reusable settings groups and individual settings that are added directly to the rule. However, consider using each rule for either reusable settings groups or to manage settings you add directly to the rule. This separation can help simplify future configurations or changes you might make.

For guidance on configuring reusable groups, and then adding them to this profile, see Use reusable groups of settings with Intune policies.

Exclusions for Attack Surface Reduction Rules

Intune supports the following two settings to exclude specific file and folder paths from evaluation by Attack Surface Reduction rules:

  • Global: Use Attack Surface Reduction Only Exclusions.

    Screen capture of the Attack Surface Reduction Only Exclusions setting.

    When a device is assigned at least one policy that configures Attack Surface Reduction Only Exclusions, the configured exclusions apply to all attack surface reduction rules that target that device. This behavior occurs because devices receive a superset of attack surface reduction rule settings from all applicable policies, and the settings exclusions can't be managed for individual settings. To avoid having exclusions applied to all settings on a device, don't use this setting. Instead, configure ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions for individual settings.

    For more information, see the documentation for the Defender CSP: Defender/AttackSurfaceReductionOnlyExclusions.

  • Individual settings: Use ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions

    Screen capture of the ASR Only \Per Rule Exclusions setting.

    When you set an applicable setting in an attack surface reduction rule profile to anything other than Not configured, Intune presents the option to use ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions for that individual setting. With this option, you can configure a file and folder exclusion that are isolated to individual settings, which is in contrast to use of the global setting Attack Surface Reduction Only Exclusions which applies its exclusions to all settings on the device.

    By default, ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions is set to Not configured.

    Important

    ASR policies do not support merge functionality for ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions and a policy conflict can result when multiple policies that configure ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions for the same device conflict. To avoid conflicts, combine the configurations for ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions into a single ASR policy. We are investigating adding policy merge for ASR Only Per Rule Exclusions in a future update.

Policy merge for settings

Policy merge helps avoid conflicts when multiple profiles that apply to the same device configure the same setting with different values, creating a conflict. To avoid conflicts, Intune evaluates the applicable settings from each profile that applies to the device. Those settings then merge into a single superset of settings.

For Attack surface reduction policy, the following profiles support policy merge:

  • Device control

Policy merge for device control profiles

Device control profiles support policy merge for USB Device IDs. The profile settings that manage Device IDs and that support policy merge include:

  • Allow hardware device installation by device identifiers
  • Block hardware device installation by device identifiers
  • Allow hardware device installation by setup classes
  • Block hardware device installation by setup classes
  • Allow hardware device installation by device instance identifiers
  • Block hardware device installation by device instance identifiers

Policy merge applies to the configuration of each setting across the different profiles that apply that specific setting to a device. The result is a single list for each of the supported settings being applied to a device. For example:

  • Policy merge evaluates the lists of setup classes that were configured in each instance of Allow hardware device installation by setup classes that applies to a device. The lists are merged into a single allowlist where any duplicate setup classes are removed.

    Removal of duplicates from the list is done to remove the common source of conflicts. The combined allowlist is then delivered to the device.

Policy merge doesn't compare or merge the configurations from different settings. For example:

  • Expanding on the first example, in which multiple lists from Allow hardware device installation by setup classes were merged into a single list, you have several instances of Block hardware device installation by setup classes that applies to the same device. All the related blocklists merge into a single blocklist for the device that then deploys to the device.

    • The allowlist for setup classes isn't compared nor merged with the blocklist for setup classes.
    • Instead, the device receives both lists, as they are from two distinct settings. The device then enforces the most restrictive setting for installation by setup classes.

    With this example, a setup class defined in the blocklist overrides the same setup class if found on the allowlist. The result would be that the setup class is blocked on the device.

Next steps

Configure Endpoint security policies.

View details for the settings in profiles for Attack surface reduction profiles.