The modern enterprise landscape is a complex tapestry of distributed endpoints, hybrid work models, and an ever-expanding attack surface, creating a significant challenge for IT and security teams who often find themselves juggling a disparate collection of siloed tools. In response to this growing complexity, Hexnode has unveiled a series of significant updates to its Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) platform, directly addressing the critical need for a more integrated and efficient approach to endpoint security and IT operations. These enhancements are built upon three strategic pillars: fortifying compliance frameworks, expanding intelligent automation, and centralizing security management into a single, cohesive experience. The overarching philosophy driving these changes is a commitment to transforming operational complexity into strategic clarity, providing a unified platform that delivers the deep visibility and proactive control necessary to secure every device without hindering the agility required in today’s fast-paced business environments. This evolution marks a decisive shift from reactive device management to a proactive, security-first posture.
Strengthening Security Through a Zero Trust Framework
Building a Foundation with Advanced Compliance
A cornerstone of Hexnode’s platform enhancement is the substantial advancement of its zero-trust security capabilities, which are now powered by a more sophisticated and highly customizable compliance framework. This robust system is designed to extend its reach across all major operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS, ensuring a consistent security posture regardless of the device type. Moving well beyond rudimentary compliance checks, the framework empowers IT administrators to construct intricate, multi-condition rules that continuously assess the security posture of each device in real time. These rules can be configured based on a wide array of dynamic factors, such as a device’s current network status—for example, whether it is connected to a secure corporate Wi-Fi or an untrusted public network. They can also incorporate vital device health metrics, including the operating system version, current patch level, and the presence of essential security software. This level of granular control is fundamental to a zero-trust architecture, which operates on the core principle of “never trust, always verify,” ensuring that no user or device is granted access to corporate resources until its trustworthiness has been thoroughly vetted.
The practical application of this advanced compliance framework offers IT teams unprecedented flexibility in managing diverse device ecosystems. The system’s cross-platform nature ensures that a unified set of security principles can be applied to every endpoint, from corporate-issued laptops to employee-owned smartphones, effectively eliminating security gaps that can arise from inconsistent policies. Administrators can now tailor compliance rules to align with specific device ownership models, applying stricter controls to Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) scenarios while allowing more flexibility for corporate-owned devices. This continuous posture assessment means that a device’s compliance status is not a one-time check at enrollment but a dynamic state that is constantly re-evaluated. If a device falls out of compliance at any moment—for instance, if a user disables a required security feature or connects to a malicious network—access can be automatically revoked, preventing potential data breaches before they occur. This proactive enforcement transforms security from a static checklist into a dynamic, intelligent defense mechanism that adapts to the ever-changing threat landscape.
Enforcing Access with Key Integrations and Benchmarks
To ensure that its robust compliance rules translate into effective security enforcement, Hexnode has significantly expanded its critical access control integrations with two of the industry’s leading identity and security providers. The platform is now officially integrated as a third-party device compliance partner for Microsoft Intune. This pivotal collaboration enables organizations that use Hexnode UEM for endpoint management to seamlessly transmit device compliance status information directly to Microsoft Entra ID. As a result, administrators can leverage the full power of Microsoft’s Conditional Access policies. This means access to business-critical Microsoft 365 applications and other sensitive corporate resources can be granted or denied based on the real-time compliance state reported by Hexnode. For example, a device that is not up-to-date with the latest security patches can be automatically blocked from accessing company email or files, thereby closing a common and significant security vulnerability. This integration bridges the gap between endpoint management and identity-based security, creating a powerful, unified enforcement layer.
In addition to its Microsoft integration, Hexnode has also incorporated support for Okta Device Trust, allowing organizations to extend Okta’s powerful conditional access capabilities to their managed endpoints. By feeding Hexnode’s detailed device management and compliance data into Okta’s identity platform, administrators can ensure that access to any Okta-protected application is strictly limited to devices that are not only managed but also verified as compliant by Hexnode. This strengthens the security perimeter by ensuring both the user’s identity and the device’s health are vetted before access is granted. Furthermore, to help organizations align with established industry best practices, Hexnode has introduced compliance features that map to the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks for both macOS and Windows. These benchmarks provide globally recognized, consensus-developed security configuration guidelines. The new tools within the Hexnode UEM console allow IT teams to apply these hardened security baselines across their entire device fleet with minimal effort, ensuring consistent configurations, improving the overall security posture, and simplifying audit readiness.
Simplifying Operations with Intelligent Automation and Unified Visibility
Streamlining IT Workflows
Recognizing the immense pressure on modern IT teams, Hexnode has substantially expanded its automation capabilities to reduce manual burdens and facilitate proactive, large-scale device management. A key innovation in this area is the introduction of the “Alert profiles” feature, which significantly elevates notification management beyond a simple, one-size-fits-all approach. This new functionality allows administrators to create highly customized and targeted alert configurations. Instead of being inundated with a constant stream of undifferentiated notifications, IT teams can now construct specific alert profiles for different devices, users, or policies. These tailored alerts can be automatically directed to specific technicians or device groups, ensuring that critical events are immediately routed to the personnel best equipped to handle them. This level of precision dramatically cuts down on informational noise, prevents important alerts from being lost in the shuffle, and ultimately leads to much faster and more effective incident response times, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual triage.
The platform also introduces major improvements to the Windows device lifecycle management, beginning with a more streamlined and automated onboarding experience through new “Windows Enrollment Profiles.” This feature provides IT administrators with the flexibility to create comprehensive setup profiles that automate the entire enrollment process from start to finish. Key functionalities include the ability to send enrollment invitations to multiple users simultaneously via email or SMS, eliminating the need for tedious manual CSV file uploads. The profiles can also automate the assignment of devices to specific user groups and streamline the deployment of essential applications during the initial setup, ensuring that every new device is fully configured and ready for productive use from day one. To further enhance asset management, administrators can also personalize device naming conventions for easier identification and tracking within the UEM console. Collectively, these enhancements significantly reduce manual labor, enforce consistent device configurations, minimize the potential for human error, and make large-scale deployments virtually effortless.
Hardening Security and Optimizing Management
To directly address a common yet significant security vulnerability, Hexnode has now integrated official support for the Microsoft Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS). This powerful feature automates the entire password management lifecycle for local administrator accounts on Windows devices, a frequent target for attackers. The system programmatically creates strong, unique passwords for each individual device and automatically rotates them according to a schedule defined by the administrator. This eliminates the dangerous practice of using a single, static password across multiple machines. For an even higher level of security, the system can be configured to automatically change a password shortly after it has been viewed by a technician for a support session. This ensures that a temporary password is never reused and significantly mitigates the risk of credential-based attacks, such as pass-the-hash, where an attacker moves laterally across a network using stolen credentials. This proactive security measure hardens each endpoint against unauthorized access without adding any administrative overhead.
Understanding that modern enterprises operate in a variety of challenging environments, Hexnode has also enhanced its patch management capabilities to better support organizations in remote locations or those with constrained network bandwidth. The improved offline patch management for both Windows and macOS devices now utilizes a distributed server architecture. Organizations can set up local server sites to host critical operating system updates and application patches. Devices on the local network can then retrieve this content directly from the on-site server instead of each device having to download it individually from Hexnode’s central cloud server over the internet. This strategy drastically reduces internet bandwidth consumption, which can be a critical factor for offices with limited connectivity. It also significantly speeds up content delivery and ensures that vital security patches are deployed efficiently and reliably across the entire organization, even in the most challenging network conditions. This makes robust patch management achievable for every branch of the business, regardless of its location.
Centralizing Security with a Single Pane of Glass
To provide a more cohesive and unified security management experience, Hexnode has introduced a dedicated “Incidents” tab within its UEM console. This new section is designed to function as a centralized hub where administrators can monitor, investigate, and manage all critical and non-critical security events from a single, intuitive interface. It effectively consolidates alerts and events from a wide range of disparate sources—including applications, users, endpoints, and various security integrations—into one unified view. This eliminates the long-standing inefficiency of administrators having to navigate between different sections of the console or even separate tools to gain a complete and accurate picture of their organization’s overall security posture. By bringing all relevant security information into a single pane of glass, this feature provides immediate context, facilitates faster analysis of potential threats, and enables a more coordinated and effective response from security and IT teams. It simplifies complexity and empowers administrators with the holistic visibility needed to stay ahead of emerging risks.
The introduction of the “Incidents” tab was a strategic move designed not only to improve immediate operational efficiency but also to serve as a foundational bridge between comprehensive endpoint management and more advanced security operations. This new centralized hub was engineered to lay the groundwork for a tighter, more seamless integration with Hexnode’s future XDR (Extended Detection and Response) platform. This convergence is central to Hexnode’s long-term vision of establishing its UEM platform as a core, indispensable component of an enterprise’s broader security and operations strategy, rather than just a tool for device administration. The updates have collectively positioned the platform to be a central point of control where data from endpoints can be correlated with threat intelligence from other security layers, enabling more sophisticated detection and automated response actions. This evolution from a management tool to a strategic security asset has redefined the role of UEM in the modern enterprise security stack.
