Complete Guide to Compliance Policies and Conditional Access in Intune Intune compliance policies help organizations enforce security standards across managed devices. Let’s walk through how they work with Conditional Access to protect users, devices, and Microsoft 365 resources. Before we begin, be sure to subscribe to NinjaOne’s IT video hub and our YouTube channel for more tech content like this. Why Compliance Policies Matter in Intune First, compliance policies in Microsoft Intune define the security baseline devices must meet to access corporate resources. These policies evaluate settings like password requirements, disk encryption, firewall status, antivirus health, and minimum OS versions. Once a device is enrolled, Intune reports the device compliance state to Microsoft Entra ID for Conditional Access evaluation after the device is enrolled and evaluated. As a result, IT teams gain consistent enforcement across Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices. This approach is especially useful for organizations that need clear visibility into device health across cloud-managed environments. How Conditional Access Uses Compliance Data Next, Conditional Access in Entra ID uses Intune’s compliance signals to make real-time access decisions. Policies can target specific users, groups, and cloud apps such as Exchange Online or SharePoint. After that, admins define conditions like device platform, location, or risk level. Access controls require the device to be marked as compliant and can also enforce Multi-Factor Authentication. Access controls can require the device to be marked as compliant and may also enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Together, compliance policies and Conditional Access form a practical Zero Trust foundation. Device-Based vs App-Based Compliance On the other hand, not every device can meet full compliance requirements. BYOD devices that are not enrolled in Intune, MDM typically cannot report a full device compliance state. In these cases, Intune App Protection Policies (MAM) combined with app-based Conditional Access help protect corporate data at the application level without requiring full device enrollment. Meanwhile, device-based compliance is best suited for corporate-owned or fully managed endpoints, where Intune can collect detailed security data like encryption and antivirus status. How to Validate and Monitor Compliance Finally, validation is critical. On Windows, tools like dsregcmd /status help confirm Microsoft Entra join status and Intune enrollment details. Registry paths under PolicyManager, while PowerShell and Microsoft Graph provide tenant-wide reporting. Registry paths under PolicyManager can help verify enforced settings, while PowerShell and Microsoft Graph provide tenant-wide compliance reporting and automation capabilities. For more information, check out our official blog post on Compliance Policies and Conditional Access in Intune, linked in the description below.