Onslow County Schools drives secure education by providing technology access using Microsoft Intune

Onslow County Schools (Onslow) wanted to empower its small IT team to deliver the best experience for educators and students trying to run software on their school-issued computers. It saw an opportunity with Microsoft Intune to make running valuable applications—such as a browser that helps prevent cheating on online exams—more convenient while maintaining strong security. Onslow adopted Intune Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM), which is part of the Intune Suite and makes it simple for students and teachers to run approved applications without administrative privileges.

Now, Onslow is helping its IT staff manage and protect devices on or off its network and is empowering teachers to deliver their best instruction—all while keeping its data secure.

Streamlining device management on and off the network

Onslow is the 11th-largest school district in North Carolina, with over 28,000 students across 41 schools. Since 2018, it has been undergoing a cloud migration to Microsoft Azure. “Microsoft technology is the fabric of our entire organization, from human resources to finance and from faculty and staff to students,” says Jeff Pittman, Chief Technology Officer at Onslow.

Because it had adopted Intune in 2018, the district was prepared to transition to remote learning at the beginning of COVID-19, missing only one day of instruction. Onslow was one of the only districts in the state to achieve that feat. “It’s our goal to get everything in the cloud on Azure,” says Pittman. “We’re looking at doing that because of the scalability and the manageability that it gives us as a growing district.” As part of this effort, Onslow explored all the capabilities of Intune.

The district wanted to streamline device management while also giving teachers and students the ability to install important software on their devices. For example, educators wanted to use a specific web browser that restricts access to websites and applications to help prevent cheating on online exams. But running this browser required granting students and teachers administrative privileges—a security trade-off the district didn’t want to make. To give students and educators access to approved software without administrative privileges, Onslow adopted EPM.

Innovating in education through secure access to technology

In 2024, Onslow purchased 14,000 EPM licenses for grades 6–12, which the district determined would get the most value from the feature due to their standardized tests and technical education classes. By using EPM, administrators can set policies that give standard users the ability to run applications with elevation. The solution supports both automatic and user-confirmed workflows and includes tools for comprehensive insights and reporting.

As a result, Onslow is maintaining its security-first approach to remote and online work while empowering students and teachers to use several valuable applications. “Using EPM to run the anti-cheating browser has helped us improve academic outcomes so that students have a more focused, secure, and equitable testing environment in terms of academic integrity,” says Tiffany Rhodes, a teacher at Onslow.

Onslow is also using EPM to run other applications, such as graphic design software and coding tools, with elevation. And it’s enforcing least-privileged access to reduce vulnerabilities and protect data. Since implementing tools like EPM, Onslow has nearly tripled its Microsoft Secure Score.

Onslow streamlined device setup by using Windows Autopilot, which installs Windows on new devices while also enrolling them in Intune and configuring standard policies before the IT team implements EPM.

With EPM, a teacher can put in a service request to install and run a new application, and the IT team can respond to it immediately. In one example, the team gave a teacher access to new printer software within 30 minutes; before Autopilot, this process could take up to 48 hours.

Balancing security and access

Onslow is meeting its educational goals by providing secure access to more software. It is also looking to further strengthen security using Microsoft technology, including Microsoft Defender for Identity. “There’s a tight loop between Intune, Azure, Defender for Identity, and EPM, and they all work in concert with one another,” says Pittman.