Understanding Microsoft Intune Compliance Policies
This article provides a comprehensive guide to creating, configuring, and managing compliance policies within Microsoft Intune. Compliance policies are a cornerstone of a robust mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM) strategy, helping organizations enforce security and device health requirements.
What are Compliance Policies?
Compliance policies in Intune define the set of rules and settings that devices must adhere to in order to be considered compliant. These policies are crucial for:
- Enforcing Security Standards: Ensuring devices meet minimum security requirements like encryption, password complexity, and OS version.
- Protecting Company Data: Preventing access to corporate resources from non-compliant or compromised devices.
- Gaining Visibility: Providing administrators with insights into the compliance status of their managed devices.
- Enabling Conditional Access: Acting as a trigger for Microsoft Entra Conditional Access policies to grant or block access to resources based on device compliance.
When a device is marked as non-compliant, Intune can take various actions, such as notifying the user, restricting access to corporate resources, or even initiating remote actions like wiping the device (though this is a more extreme measure).
Creating Compliance Policies
Creating a compliance policy in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center involves a few key steps:
- Navigate to Devices > Compliance policies.
- Click Create policy.
- Select the Platform (e.g., Android, iOS/iPadOS, macOS, Windows 10 and later).
- Give your policy a descriptive Name and Description.
- Configure the policy settings.
- Assign the policy to user groups.
- Review and create the policy.
Tip: Start with a basic policy and gradually add more restrictive settings as your organization becomes more familiar with compliance management.
Policy Settings
Intune offers a wide range of settings to define compliance. These are typically categorized as follows:
Device Properties
- Minimum OS version: Specify the lowest acceptable operating system version.
- Maximum OS version: (For certain platforms) Define the highest acceptable OS version.
- Device manufacturer: Ensure devices are from approved manufacturers.
Device Health
- BitLocker enabled: (Windows) Require drive encryption.
- Secure boot enabled: (Windows) Ensure boot integrity.
- Device firmware protection: (Windows) Ensure device firmware is protected.
- Antivirus status: (Windows) Verify that an antivirus solution is active and up-to-date.
- Firewall enabled: (Windows) Ensure the firewall is active.
- Malware detection enabled: (Windows) Require that malware detection is enabled.
- Rooted devices: (Android) Mark rooted devices as non-compliant.
- Jailbroken devices: (iOS/iPadOS) Mark jailbroken devices as non-compliant.
Security Requirements
- Require a password to unlock devices: Enforce the need for a passcode.
- Simple password: Disallow simple passcodes (e.g., 1234, 0000).
- Minimum password length: Set the required length of the passcode.
- Password expiration (days): Force users to change their password periodically.
- Require alphanumeric characters in password: (iOS/iPadOS, macOS) Enforce stronger passwords.
- Number of previous passwords to prevent reuse: Prevent users from reusing old passcodes.
- Device encryption: (Android, iOS/iPadOS) Require the device to be encrypted.
Note: The available settings vary significantly between platforms. Always refer to the official Microsoft documentation for the most up-to-date information for each OS.
Assigning Policies
Once a compliance policy is created, it needs to be assigned to specific Azure AD user groups. This ensures that the policy is enforced on the devices belonging to users within those groups. It's best practice to assign policies to pilot groups first before rolling out to the entire organization.
You can assign policies by selecting the policy, navigating to its Properties, and then going to the Assignments section.
Reporting and Monitoring
Intune provides robust reporting capabilities to track device compliance:
- Device compliance: View an overview of compliance status across your fleet.
- Device compliance details: Drill down into individual device compliance status and the specific reasons for non-compliance.
- User and device compliance status: See which users and their devices are compliant or non-compliant.
These reports are essential for troubleshooting and for demonstrating compliance to auditors.
Advanced Topics
Actions for non-compliance
Beyond simply marking a device as non-compliant, you can configure Intune to take specific actions:
- Mark device non-compliant: The default action.
- Remind user to take action: Send notifications to the user.
- Remote lock: Lock the device remotely.
- Wipe data: Remove all corporate data (or the entire device contents).
These actions are configured on a schedule, allowing you to define how much time a user has to remediate non-compliance before stricter actions are taken.
Integration with Conditional Access
Compliance policies are a critical component of Microsoft Entra Conditional Access. By configuring Conditional Access policies, you can ensure that only compliant devices can access corporate applications and data, creating a powerful security posture.
For example, you can create a Conditional Access policy that requires users to access Microsoft 365 apps from a device that is marked as compliant by Intune.
Warning: Carefully consider the impact of your compliance policies and non-compliance actions. Aggressive settings or immediate restrictive actions can impact user productivity and lead to support calls.
By effectively utilizing Intune compliance policies, organizations can significantly enhance their security and data protection strategies.