Important
Microsoft Defender for Business is now in preview, and will roll out gradually to customers and IT Partners who sign-up here to request it. We will onboard an initial set of customers and partners in the coming weeks and will expand the preview leading up to general availability. Note that preview will launch with an initial set of scenarios, and we will be adding capabilities regularly.
Some information in this article relates to prereleased products/services that might be substantially modified before they are commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, for the information provided here.
In Microsoft Defender for Business (preview), policies are applied to devices through certain collections that are called device groups.
This article describes:
What is a device group?
A device group is a collection of devices that are grouped together because of certain specified criteria, such as operating system version. Devices that meet the criteria are included in that device group, unless you exclude them. In Microsoft Defender for Business (preview), policies are applied to devices by using device groups.
Defender for Business (preview) includes default device groups that you can use. The default device groups include all the devices that are onboarded to Defender for Business (preview). However, you can also create new device groups to assign policies with specific settings to certain devices.
All device groups, including your default device groups and any custom device groups that you define, are stored in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Create a new device group
Currently, in Defender for Business (preview), you can create a new device group while you are in the process of creating or editing a policy, as described in the following procedure:
- Go to the Microsoft 365 Defender portal (https://security.microsoft.com) and sign in.
- In the navigation pane, choose Device configuration.
- Take one of the following actions:
- Select an existing policy, and then choose Edit.
- Choose + Add to create a new policy.
Tip
To get help creating or editing a policy, see View or edit policies in Microsoft Defender for Business.
- On the General information step, review the information, edit if necessary, and then choose Next.
- Choose + Create new group.
- Specify a name and description for the device group, and then choose Next.
- Select the devices to include in the group, and then choose Create group.
- On the Device groups step, review the list of device groups for the policy. If needed, remove a group from the list. Then choose Next.
- On the Configuration settings page, review and edit settings as needed, and then choose Next. For more information about these settings, see Configuration settings.
- On the Review your policy step, review all the settings, make any needed edits, and then choose Create policy or Update policy.