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133: MDM based policies for VPN

Implementation Effort: Medium to High — VPN deployments span Intune, identity, PKI, client platform engineering, and network infrastructure teams.

User Impact: Medium — a well-designed profile improves remote access, but bad routing or authentication settings can interrupt access to critical apps.

Overview​

VPN profiles in Microsoft Intune let administrators deploy remote access settings consistently across managed devices. In a Zero Trust architecture, VPN should not be treated as blanket trust; instead, it should be scoped to specific applications, networks, or device scenarios and paired with strong authentication, compliant device requirements, and continuous monitoring. Intune helps standardize the client side of that design across Windows and other supported platforms.

Implementation Guidance​

  • Choose the remote access pattern first: Windows built-in VPN, Always On VPN, partner VPN clients, or Microsoft Tunnel for supported mobile scenarios. Do not assume one profile type fits every platform.
  • Prefer certificate-based authentication such as EAP-TLS where possible, and deploy the trusted root and client certificate chain before assigning the VPN profile.
  • Define split-tunnel versus full-tunnel routing intentionally. Split tunneling often provides better user experience, but it requires clear DNS, proxy, and application access planning.
  • Use Microsoft Entra Conditional Access and device compliance to control who can reach sensitive applications, rather than treating a VPN connection as full trust by itself.
  • Pilot with a small set of users across home, hotel, cellular, and branch-office networks to validate DNS resolution, tunnel persistence, proxy interactions, and identity prompts.
  • Monitor connection failures, certificate renewals, and tunnel health, and document support runbooks for expired certs, bad routes, and fallback access methods.

Video Walkthrough​

Reference​