Walk into almost any SMB estate and you’ll find the same thing — a local administrator password that was set during imaging three years ago, shared across every device, and written down somewhere nobody wants to admit. It’s the sort of gap that never shows up on a client’s risk register until it does. What surprises me is how many MSPs haven’t yet rolled out Windows LAPS, even though it’s sitting right there inside Microsoft 365 Business Premium — Intune is part of the licence, the feature is part of Windows, and there’s no extra agent to push.

What it actually is

Windows LAPS is the successor to the old “Microsoft LAPS” tool — the one that needed an AD schema extension and a client-side extension pushed by GPO. The replacement is baked into Windows 10, Windows 11, and Server 2019+. Nothing to install. You just tell it what to do.

Each managed device backs its local admin password up to a directory — either on-prem AD or Entra ID. Pick one per device, and for cloud-joined SMB fleets it’s almost always Entra. The password is stored encrypted against an Entra key, and only users holding the right role can read it. The device itself never keeps the current password in the clear once it has rotated.

Deploying through Intune

In the Intune admin centre it lives under Endpoint security → Account protection → create a policy of type Local admin password solution (Windows LAPS). Under the hood you’re configuring the LAPS CSP, but the UI hides that detail.

The settings worth thinking through:

• Backup directory — Azure AD or Active Directory. Disabled turns it off.
  

• Administrator account name — leave blank and it manages the built-in Administrator, which is disabled by default on most modern builds. Name it explicitly if you want LAPS to manage a dedicated local admin.
  

• Automatic account management — the newer setting that lets LAPS create and maintain the account for you, so you don’t need a separate provisioning step.
  

• Password complexity, length, age — 14+ characters, full complexity, 30-day rotation is a sensible baseline.

Assign the policy to an Entra device group, not a user group — it’s a device-scoped CSP and won’t apply against user targeting.

Rotation, post-authentication reset, and retrieval

The bit that’s genuinely new — and the bit most pros miss — is the post-authentication reset. When the managed account signs in interactively, Windows starts a grace timer. When that elapses, it can rotate the password, sign the account off, or reboot the device. That behaviour alone shuts the door on a technician staying signed in for days with a password someone else might already have read. Scheduled rotation still runs on the age you set, and you can force an on-demand rotation from the device blade in Intune.

Retrieval is the other place it pays for itself. In Intune, open the device and click Local admin password. Or do it from Entra directly — Devices → the device → Local administrator password recovery. The role needed is Cloud Device Administrator, or an Intune role with the right retrieval action. Every read is audited, and by default reading the password triggers a fresh rotation, so a looked-up credential is a one-shot — useful if you’re handing it to a junior tech for a single call.

Worth the morning it takes

Rolling this out across a client tenant is an afternoon’s work per fleet, and it closes a gap most MSPs have been quietly carrying for years. If you’re already selling Business Premium, you’re already paying for it. The only real question left is why it isn’t deployed yet.