Why Intune Alone Isn’t Enough

• Use Intune for declarative policy, not manual cleanup
• Let Azure Automation & Functions close the loops humans forget
• Build keyless, least-privilege control with Managed Identities
• Turn Graph + Log Analytics into a single source of truth for posture, drift, and MTTR
• Design a device platform that corrects, cleans, and reconciles itself at scale

🔥 Part I — Why Intune Alone Doesn’t Scale We start with the uncomfortable truth:
Intune is necessary, but not sufficient. You’ll hear the seven wounds that appear when Intune is left to carry everything:

1. Manual Process Hell
   • Exports, blade-clicking, chasing single devices
   • Works at 100 endpoints; collapses at 10,000
   • MTTR grows; humans become the queue
2. Configuration Drift
   • Same policy, different actual states
   • Deferred reboots, half-applied scripts, missed check-ins
   • No automatic reconciliation = drift piles up
3. Overpowered Humans
   • Global Admin summoned “just this once”
   • Broad roles, shared secrets, one-off fixes that never die
   • Least privilege becomes theory, not practice
4. Conditional Access Chaos
   • Sprawling policies, cryptic names, inconsistent user prompts
   • No single ledger tying access failures to device posture & policy evaluation
5. Scattered Ownership
   • Certs, scripts, patching, onboarding all owned by different teams
   • No one owns the end-to-end flow from enroll → secure → retire
6. Never-Cleaned Device Graveyards
   • Stale, lost, and loaner devices still reported as “active” or “compliant”
   • Metrics lie, policies target corpses
7. Patching Without Orchestration
   • Rings exist, but no workflow logic:
     • Patch only when Defender is healthy
     • Only reboot in real maintenance windows
     • Escalate when a device ignores multiple summons

We reframe the core idea: Intune declares. Azure enforces.
Intune shouldn’t remember, reconcile, and repair without Azure at its side. 🧩 Part II — What Happens When You Combine Intune with Azure Then we show what changes when you let Azure carry the heavy execution: Azure Automation — The Clock That Never Forgets

• Nightly jobs to:
  • Sweep stale devices and disable/retire them
  • Renew certificates before expiry
  • Check for configuration drift and trigger remediation
• Adds nuance Intune alone can’t: time zones, retry logic, health checks, grace periods

Managed Identities — Keyless, Least-Privilege Hands

• No more secrets in scripts or pipelines
• System-Assigned Managed Identities on Automation / Functions
• Narrow Graph permissions:
  • Device.Read.All for inventory
  • DeviceManagementConfiguration.Read.All for policy view
  • Minimal write scopes for specific actions
• Identity dies with the workload; power is explicit and auditable

Entra ID Governance — Least Privilege as Law

• Role separation: device managers, policy authors, security readers, break-glass
• PIM for just-in-time elevation, approvals, and auto-expiry
• Conditional Access that actually respects device posture & risk signals

Azure Functions — The Nerves That React in Seconds

• Event-driven responses to:
  • Device enrollment
  • Compliance state changes
  • Webhooks & alerts
• Examples:
  • Tag devices on enrollment and push them into the right dynamic groups
  • Quarantine non-compliant devices via group-based Conditional Access
  • Log every decision into Log Analytics

Microsoft Graph & Log Analytics — The Road & The Ledger

• Graph as the single API to devices, users, groups, and policies
• Log Analytics as the ledger of record:
  • Drift variance by policy
  • MTTR by device type
  • Cleanup rates for stale devices
• KQL turns hunches into charts instead of arguments

📜 Part III — Real Enterprise Scenarios (With Numbers) We walk through three real-world patterns: 1. The Device Graveyard Cleanup

• Nightly Runbook under Managed Identity:
  • Find devices unseen for 60 days
  • Exclude tagged loaners/lab/break-glass
  • Disable, notify owners, log to Log Analytics
• Results:
  • ~9% cleanup in week one
  • ~42% reduction in stale devices by day 30
  • Conditional Access stops treating ghosts as compliant

2. Zero-Touch Onboarding That Actually Works

• Enrollment event triggers Function:
  • Read hardware & purchasing details
  • Stamp tags: region, role, security baseline
  • Auto-add device to dynamic groups & policy sets
• Automation jobs follow up with cert checks & early health checks
• Results:
  • Onboarding time cut from 9 business days → ~90 minutes
  • 60%+ drop in “new device not ready” tickets

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