All posts by Richard M. Hicks

Always On VPN Ask Me Anything (AMA) November 2025

It’s been a while since we’ve held our last AMA, so I’ve added an event to the calendar so we can all connect once more before the end of the year. With that, the next Always On VPN AMA session is scheduled for Tuesday, November 18, 2025, at 10:00 AM PDT (UTC-8).

Do you have questions about Always On VPN? Are you having a specific issue you can’t figure out? Would you like more information about configuration options? Here’s your chance to get your questions answered! Register now and join the session to ask me anything (AMA!) about Microsoft Windows Always On VPN and related technologies.

The AMA will be an open forum session where we can all talk shop about Always On VPN and related technologies. It’s a great chance to learn new things and share experiences with your peers. We’ll discuss known issues and limitations, best practices, and more. I’m also planning to have some special guests, so be sure to join us!

Everyone is welcome. Don’t miss out on this excellent opportunity to connect and learn. Register now!

Can’t make the session? Register anyway, and I’ll send you the link to the recording as soon as it is available!

Entra Private Access Channels Are Unreachable

Administrators deploying Microsoft Entra Private Access may encounter a scenario in which the Global Secure Access (GSA) agent reports an error. However, the client continues to work without issue, and all internal resources remain reachable via the Entra Private Access connection. This issue occurs only when the Private Access forwarding profile is enabled alone. It does not happen if the Microsoft traffic forwarding profile is also enabled.

GSA Status Error

When this happens, the Private access channel status is Connected, but the Entra access channel is Disconnected. Also, you will see the following error message when clicking on the GSA client in the notification area.

Some channels are unreachable

Global Secure Access has some channels that are unreachable

Health Check

To investigate further, click the Troubleshooting tab, then click Run tool in the Advanced diagnostics tool section. In the Health check section, you will see the following error message.

Diagnostic URLs were not found in forwarding policy

Scrolling down the list also reveals the following error messages.

Magic IP received = False

Tunneling succeeded Entra Authentication = False

Root Cause

Several months ago, Microsoft made changes to the health check probes that required enabling the Microsoft traffic forwarding profile to work. Some essential health-check probes were not accessible via the Private Access channel, resulting in the error messages shown above when only the Private Access forwarding profile is enabled.

Resolution

Microsoft is rolling out changes to address this issue at the time of this writing (late October 2025). If you encounter this error, it will most likely resolve itself soon. Alternatively, administrators can enable the Microsoft traffic forwarding profile, which will also fix this issue.

Additional Information

Microsoft Entra Private Access

Microsoft Entra Global Secure Access (GSA)

Microsoft Security Service Edge (SSE) Now Generally Available

Microsoft Entra Security Service Edge (SSE) on RunAs Radio

2 Comments

by Richard M. Hicks on October 30, 2025 • Permalink

Posted by Richard M. Hicks on October 30, 2025

https://directaccess.richardhicks.com/2025/10/30/entra-private-access-channels-are-unreachable/

Certificate Connector for Microsoft Intune Agent Certificate Renewal Failure

The Certificate Connector for Microsoft Intune is a vital component that allows administrators to issue and manage enterprise PKI certificates to endpoints managed by Microsoft Intune. The connector is installed on a Windows server with access to the on-premises Certificate Authority (CA). It is registered with Intune and can be used by any PKCS or SCEP device configuration profiles defined by Intune administrators.

Agent Certificate

When you install the Certificate Connector for Intune, a certificate issued by the Microsoft Intune ImportPFX Connector CA is automatically enrolled into the local computer certificate store of the server where the connector is installed. This certificate authenticates the connector to Intune and is valid for one year from the date of issuance. This certificate is automatically renewed in most cases. However, some configurations prevent this from happening.

Failed To Renew

Administrators may find event log errors with event ID 2 from the CertificateConnectors source in the Microsoft-Intune-CertificateConnectors operational event log with the following information.

Pki Create Service:

Failed to renew agent certificate

System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Access is denied.

Root Cause

Agent certificate renewal fails when the Certificate Connector for Intune is running under a service account that is not a member of the local administrators security group. You will not encounter this error if the connector services are running in the SYSTEM context, however.

Resolution

There are a few different ways to resolve this issue. Here are some options to consider.

Grant Admin Rights

Adding the service account under which the connector service runs will allow the agent certificate to renew automatically. However, this may not be desirable from a security perspective. To address this, administrators may temporarily grant local administrative access to renew the agent certificate, then revoke this permission once the certificate has been successfully renewed. However, this is a manual process that doesn’t scale well and requires annual administrative intervention.

Reinstall

Uninstalling and reinstalling the Certificate Connector for Intune will force a new certificate enrollment during the registration process. You can delete the old certificate after completing the installation.

Switch to SYSTEM

Changing from a service account to SYSTEM will also resolve this issue. However, it is not recommended to make these changes directly on the services themselves. Instead, administrators should remove and reinstall the Certificate Connector for Intune, selecting the SYSTEM option rather than the service account method.

Note: Using the SYSTEM account for the Certificate Connector for Intune should be avoided when using PKCS. Details here.

Summary

The Certificate Connector for Intune agent certificate renewal fails when the service is configured to run as a service account without local administrative rights. The best way to resolve this is to add the service account to the local administrators group on the server where the connector is installed. However, this isn’t always ideal. Although running the connector in the SYSTEM context is acceptable when using SCEP, it should be avoided when using PKCS. Administrators will have to accept the risk of the service account having local administrative rights or accept that they’ll have to reinstall the connector annually.