090: Certificates
Implementation Effort: High
User Impact: Medium
Overview
Certificates are a foundational control for secure device access. In Microsoft Intune, certificate profiles are commonly used for Wi-Fi authentication, VPN authentication, mutual TLS to business services, and other scenarios where strong device or user trust is required. Zero Trust guidance should treat certificates as short-lived, governed credentials rather than permanent device identity. Good certificate design includes issuance, renewal, revocation, monitoring, and dependency mapping to the workloads that break if a certificate is missing or expired.
Implementation Guidance
- Choose the right certificate method for each scenario: trusted root and intermediate certificates establish trust, while SCEP, PKCS, or imported personal certificates provide the client credential itself.
- Decide whether to use Microsoft Cloud PKI or your existing PKI integration model, and document issuance authority, NDES or connector dependencies if used, renewal timing, and revocation expectations.
- Define certificate subject and SAN formats intentionally so downstream systems can authorize devices or users correctly.
- Deploy trust chain certificates before deploying Wi-Fi, VPN, or app settings that depend on client certificates.
- Pilot certificate issuance, renewal, and revocation end to end. Many problems appear only when a device renews or when a certificate-dependent service rotates trust requirements.
- Monitor failed issuance, expiring certificates, and policy conflicts so authentication problems are addressed before users lose access.
Reference
- Microsoft Cloud PKI for Microsoft Intune - Microsoft Intune — Overview of Microsoft Cloud PKI for issuing and managing certificates for Intune-managed devices.
- Use SCEP certificate profiles with Microsoft Intune - Microsoft Intune — Explains how to create and deploy SCEP certificate profiles with Microsoft Intune.
- Use PKCS certificate profiles with Microsoft Intune - Microsoft Intune — Explains how to create and deploy PKCS certificate profiles with Microsoft Intune.