How to Manage Mobile Devices with Microsoft Intune

The modern UK workplace has fundamentally changed. Employees no longer work exclusively from company-issued desktops in a single office. They work from laptops in coffee shops, tablets on trains between London and Birmingham, smartphones in client meetings, and personal devices at home. This mobility delivers enormous productivity benefits, but it also creates significant management and security challenges that traditional IT tools were never designed to address.

Microsoft Intune is Microsoft's cloud-based endpoint management solution, and for UK businesses already invested in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, it represents the most natural and cost-effective way to manage and secure the diverse range of devices that access corporate data. Intune allows you to control how devices are configured, enforce security policies, deploy applications, protect corporate data on personal devices, and remotely wipe lost or stolen equipment — all from a single cloud-based console.

This guide explains what Microsoft Intune is, how it works, what it can do for your business, and how to implement it effectively. Whether you are managing 20 devices or 2,000, Intune provides the tools you need to maintain control without restricting the flexibility that modern workers expect.

What Is Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that provides mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM) capabilities. It is part of the Microsoft Endpoint Manager suite and is included in several Microsoft 365 licensing plans, including Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Enterprise E3, and Enterprise E5. For many UK businesses, this means Intune is already available as part of their existing subscription — they simply need to configure and deploy it.

Intune manages devices across all major platforms: Windows 10 and 11, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android. This cross-platform support is essential for UK businesses where employees use a mixture of company-issued Windows laptops, personal iPhones, Android tablets, and macOS devices. Rather than requiring separate management tools for each platform, Intune provides a unified console that applies consistent policies across all device types.

The service operates entirely in the cloud, which means there is no on-premises server infrastructure to deploy, maintain, or update. Configuration and management happen through the Microsoft Intune admin centre, a web-based portal that your IT team or managed service provider can access from anywhere. This cloud-native architecture aligns perfectly with the hybrid and remote working models that have become standard across UK businesses.

Core Capabilities of Microsoft Intune

Intune provides a comprehensive set of capabilities that address the full lifecycle of device management, from initial enrolment through to retirement. Understanding these capabilities helps you plan an effective deployment.

Device Enrolment

Intune supports multiple enrolment methods to accommodate different device ownership scenarios. For company-owned devices, Windows Autopilot enables zero-touch provisioning — a new laptop arrives from the manufacturer, the employee turns it on, signs in with their Microsoft 365 credentials, and Intune automatically configures the device with the correct settings, applications, and security policies. No IT intervention required. For Apple devices, Apple Business Manager integrates with Intune to provide similar automated enrolment. For Android devices, Android Enterprise enrolment offers both fully managed and work profile options.

For personal devices (BYOD), Intune offers a lighter-touch enrolment model that protects corporate data without taking full control of the employee's personal device. The employee installs the Intune Company Portal app, registers their device, and Intune applies policies only to the corporate data and applications — their personal photos, messages, and apps remain untouched and invisible to IT.

Configuration Profiles

Configuration profiles allow you to define and enforce device settings at scale. You can configure Wi-Fi connections (automatically connecting managed devices to your corporate network), VPN profiles (ensuring secure connectivity for remote workers), email settings (pre-configuring Outlook with the correct server settings), security settings (enforcing screen lock, PIN complexity, encryption), and restrictions (preventing data transfer from corporate apps to personal apps).

Feature	Company-Owned Devices	Personal Devices (BYOD)
Enrolment Method	Autopilot / DEP / Android Enterprise (fully managed)	Company Portal / Work Profile
Device Control	Full device management	Work data only (MAM)
App Deployment	Mandatory and optional apps	Corporate apps in work container
Security Policies	Full device policies	App-level policies only
Remote Wipe	Full device wipe	Selective wipe (work data only)
Personal Data Visibility	IT can see device inventory	Personal data invisible to IT
User Privacy	Lower (company device)	Higher (personal data protected)

Application Management

Intune allows you to deploy, update, and manage applications across all managed devices. You can push required applications (such as Microsoft Office, your VPN client, or your CRM app) to devices automatically during enrolment, make optional applications available through the Company Portal for self-service installation, and remove applications when they are no longer needed or when an employee leaves the organisation.

For BYOD scenarios, Intune's app protection policies are particularly powerful. These policies create a managed container around corporate applications on personal devices, preventing data from being copied, shared, or saved to unmanaged locations. An employee can view a confidential document in Outlook on their personal phone but cannot copy the text and paste it into a personal email or save it to their personal cloud storage. If the employee leaves the organisation, a selective wipe removes all corporate data and applications from the device without affecting personal content.

Compliance Policies and Conditional Access

Compliance policies define the minimum security requirements that a device must meet to access corporate resources. You might require that devices have encryption enabled, a minimum operating system version installed, a screen lock configured, and no jailbreak or root detected. Devices that do not meet these requirements are marked as non-compliant.

Conditional Access, powered by Azure Active Directory, uses compliance status as a factor in access decisions. You can create policies that block access to corporate email, SharePoint, and Teams from non-compliant devices, require multi-factor authentication when accessing sensitive applications, restrict access from untrusted locations or networks, and enforce additional verification for high-risk sign-in attempts. This combination of compliance policies and Conditional Access creates a zero-trust security model that protects corporate data regardless of where or how employees access it.

Implementing Intune: A Step-by-Step Approach

A successful Intune deployment requires careful planning and a phased approach. Attempting to enrol every device and enforce every policy on day one is a recipe for disruption and user resistance. Instead, follow a structured implementation plan that builds capability gradually.

Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1-2). Configure the Intune tenant, set up Apple Push Notification certificates and Android Enterprise integration, create device groups based on your organisational structure, and define your initial compliance and configuration policies. Test everything with a small pilot group of IT-savvy users who can provide feedback and identify issues.

Phase 2: Pilot (Weeks 3-4). Expand to a broader pilot group — perhaps 10-20% of your users — covering a representative mix of device types, roles, and locations. Deploy core applications, enable Conditional Access in report-only mode (so you can see what would be blocked without actually blocking anything), and gather feedback on the user experience.

Phase 3: Rollout (Weeks 5-8). Roll out to the remaining user base in waves, starting with the least complex groups and ending with specialist users who may have unique requirements. Enable Conditional Access enforcement. Deploy additional applications and policies as needed. Provide user training and support materials to ease the transition.

Phase 4: Optimisation (Ongoing). Continuously monitor compliance dashboards, refine policies based on real-world experience, address edge cases, and extend the deployment to cover new scenarios such as kiosks, shared devices, or meeting room equipment.

GDPR and Compliance Benefits

For UK businesses subject to GDPR (which is effectively all businesses that process personal data), Intune provides several compliance benefits. The ability to enforce encryption on all devices that access corporate data helps meet the GDPR requirement for appropriate technical measures. Remote wipe capabilities ensure that personal data can be removed from lost or stolen devices promptly, reducing the risk of a reportable data breach. Compliance reporting provides auditable evidence that your device fleet meets your security standards — valuable documentation if the ICO ever questions your data protection practices.

Intune's conditional access policies also support the GDPR principle of data minimisation by ensuring that only authorised users on compliant devices can access personal data. This reduces the attack surface and limits the potential impact of a compromise. For businesses in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, or legal, these capabilities are not merely nice to have — they are essential for meeting regulatory expectations.