When you let your users access their Exchange e-mail from a mobile device, you have to consider how doing so will impact your organization’s security. Microsoft Exchange Server can apply a robust set of security policies to mobile devices through its mobile device mailbox policies.
Mobile device mailbox policies (formerly known as ActiveSync mailbox policies) are designed to provide security in situations where using Group Policy settings is impossible. As you may know, you can only apply Group Policy settings to domain members. The only smartphones that were ever capable of being domain-enrolled were those that ran Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.x. Other smartphones (including Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices) can’t be domain-enrolled. You can use mobile device mailbox policies to apply security to those devices, even though they aren’t domain members.
Although mobile device mailbox policies are traditionally used to secure smartphones, those policies aren’t limited to smartphone security. You can actually apply mobile device mailbox policies to any device that uses ActiveSync to connect to Exchange Server. This includes devices such as the Microsoft Surface tablet, the iPad, and even PCs or tablets running Windows 8.
One caveat for using mobile device mailbox policies to secure mobile devices is that each make and model of mobile device offers a different level of support. For example, Windows Phone 7 devices were notorious for failing to support a considerable number of the individual policy settings.
Because not every mobile device provides an equal level of support for mobile device mailbox policies, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with which devices support the various policy settings. Windows Phone 7 devices, for example, only support the following Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 mobile device mailbox policy sett