Intune sprawl – the elephant in the room

Intune sprawl is the accumulation of unnecessary, duplicated or poorly understood configuration within an Intune environment. It typically develops over several years as changing requirements, troubleshooting activities and new platform capabilities introduce additional configuration.

Microsoft Intune has become the endpoint management solution of choice for many organisations. As the solution has evolved, so too have the best practices and more efficient means of achieving requirements with new features and capabilities.

With Intune being a SaaS solution, feature releases are in some ways less controlled from an individual organisation point of view than with the traditional on-premises predecessors and alternative solutions. Major version releases would be approached as a managed project, with an associated solution design and managed implementation/migration. This would then make new features and capabilities available for use. It was broadly accepted that this change required a structured, managed approach.

Having access to new features and capabilities regularly is great. The problem comes when it becomes difficult to keep pace with them, or when implementation is not managed effectively.

What Intune sprawl looks like

What has become more noticeable over the years is organisations retaining stale profiles, configuration that no one really understands completely, duplicate configuration, overlapping assignments, and a fear of changing configuration in case of unintended consequences.

Left unchecked and misunderstood, this compounds over time and results in a platform that is increasingly difficult to manage.

As an example, the ‘Windows Security Baseline for Windows 10 and later’ packages hundreds of recommended security settings into a single, versioned policy. Historically, achieving a similar level of hardening often required multiple configuration profiles, custom OMA-URI settings, scripts and separate assignments. As Intune has matured, many of these historical approaches have become unnecessary, yet they often remain in production environments today.

Whilst every organisation has unique challenges, requirements, and appropriate levels of hardening, foundational baselines are intended as exactly that – a core baseline from which organisations can build.

The example of Security Baselines is just to demonstrate how Intune has evolved over time. Many organisations prefer to harden in accordance with other benchmarks such as CIS, which have varying configuration complexity and end results.

Over the years, configuration builds up and you can often end up with many more policies than are needed, conflicting configurations, duplicated settings, application version mismatches, an unpleasant device provisioning situation as a result, and an inefficient device over time that is hard to troubleshoot.

Some common examples of Intune sprawl and general inefficiencies include –

• The same settings within a Settings Catalog profile and a template like ‘Device restrictions’.
• Multiple profiles containing the same, or conflicting settings.
• An inconsistent approach to assignment covering Users and Devices.
• Endpoint security settings defined across baselines and explicit profiles.
• An inconsistent application delivery strategy using Microsoft Store, Win32 and MSI applications.
• An application catalogue containing redundant or obsolete applications.
• Vague or no descriptions attached to configuration that makes it harder to understand purpose and requirement.
• Legacy PowerShell scripts replaced by native Intune functionality, but still being used.
• Multiple policies targeting overlapping groups, making it difficult to understand which configuration ultimately applies.

How this creates a bigger problem than just an administrative one

The above is an administrative headache, and a problem that many will admit to having, but not knowing how to resolve, or simply kicking the can because it’s not a critical business disruption problem.

The impact, however, eventually extends beyond administration and begins affecting end users. When you consider Autopilot for example, having lots of conflicting or duplicating configuration, and inconsistent application delivery approaches causes unnecessary overhead.

During provisioning, Intune still needs to evaluate assignments, resolve dependencies and determine configuration precedence. The more unnecessary configuration that exists, the greater the opportunity for provisioning delays and troubleshooting complexity.

In addition to device provisioning, more generally, over time the cost of support increases due to complexity being higher, troubleshooting taking longer, and escalations become common.

How to prevent this scenario?

To prevent this from happening, the following are some good practices to follow –

• Maintain a regular servicing cadence to identify potential configuration sprawl and resolutions.
• Ensure there is an appropriate change control process in place, importantly including consideration at the architecture level.
• Ensuring there is an appropriate and understood test process.
• Ensure there is a documented and understood approach to naming conventions, personas, and groups. Maximise use of automated features like Dynamic groups to reduce human error.
• Consider features like ‘Multi Admin Approval’ which is a security feature in Intune that requires a second administrator to approve changes. This helps prevent accidental changes or misuse of privileged accounts.
• Monitor Intune regularly for errors, conflicts and excessive policy assignment.
• Keep track of the feature roadmap and updated best practices to position the organisation for future improvements.
• Consider third-party tools for tasks like application lifecycle management.
• Regularly retire superseded configuration once replacement policies have been validated.
• Prioritise simplicity wherever possible and appropriate.
• Consider an independent assessment to identify redundant configuration, conflicting policies and opportunities to simplify the environment.

Regular reviews, good governance and a willingness to simplify existing configuration help ensure that Intune remains a manageable platform rather than an increasingly complex collection of historical decisions based on what was available at the time. The challenge is not preventing sprawl entirely, but recognising when simplification is needed and making it part of the operational lifecycle.

Ultimately, every organisation reaches a point where simplifying its Intune environment becomes unavoidable. The longer configuration sprawl is left unchecked, the more difficult and time-consuming it becomes to untangle years of accumulated technical debt and complexity.