Microsoft Details New Enterprise Features In Second March Firmware Update For Surface Pro 3

Microsoft today released a new Surface Pro 3 firmware update which brings several new enterprise focused features like enterprise disk encryption and more. Surface Pro UEFI (v3.11.760.0) adds support for enterprise disk encryption, enhances the advanced configuration settings for device security, and adds configurable support from the Windows OS for provisioning scenarios. Microsoft detailed this update today, read it below.

Surface Pro 3:

1. Surface Pro UEFI update (v3.11.760.0) provides added flexibility to configure UEFI in Surface Pro 3 devices. As more of commercial customers are deploying Surface Pro 3 for their end users every day, they have asked for more flexibility to configure the UEFI in these devices. Here are some of the improvements that are now available –
2. Modifications to boot process: It is now possible to configure UEFI to allow the system to boot from alternate devices such as USB flash drives and PXE, without requiring Volume Down button to be pressed at boot time.
3. Advanced device security capabilities: Many customers have asked for advanced device security capabilities. For example, education customers want the camera turned off so students can focus on their learning experience in class. To support such unique scenarios, customers can now selectively disable following hardware ports on the device.
   1.    Side USB port
   2. ­   Docking ports
   3. ­   Front camera
   4. ­   Rear camera
   5. ­   On Board Audio
   6. ­   microSD card
   7. ­   Wi Fi
   8. ­   BluetoothCustomers can also choose to disable Boot from Network (PXE) capability.
4.  OS Configurable Settings: To help large enterprise customers support their provisioning scenarios, we have now added an interface to allow UEFI configuration settings to be managed remotely. In an upcoming update, we will be releasing a downloadable tool that commercial customers can use to configure UEFI settings on their devices.
5. Surface Pro UEFI update (v3.11.760.0) improves customer experience while installing the firmware capsule updates.
   1. ­   Improves performance of EFI applications such as 3rd party disk encryption software that load before Windows.
   2. ­   Improves the reliability of the ESC key functions in pre-OS environments, such as Bitlocker Recovery screen.

Source: Microsoft