Always On VPN Book Available for Pre-Order

Great news! My new book, Implementing Always On VPN, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. This new book, scheduled for release in late 2021, is a comprehensive implementation guide for Windows 10 Always On VPN. Drawing on many years of experience deploying Always On VPN for organizations worldwide, it covers all aspects of an Always On VPN deployment, including planning and design, prerequisite gathering, infrastructure preparation, and client deployment.

In addition, it contains detailed, prescriptive guidance for advanced configuration options such as application and traffic filtering and proxy server configuration. Cloud deployments using Azure VPN gateway and Virtual WAN are covered, and it includes guidance for configuring Azure MFA and Conditional Access.

Also, the book includes thorough guidance for provisioning certificates using Microsoft Endpoint Manager/Intune using both PKCS and SCEP. It outlines options for high availability for VPN and authentication infrastructure and provides details for ongoing system maintenance and operational support.

Finally, the book has an entire chapter dedicated to troubleshooting and resolving common (and not so common!) issues encountered with Windows 10 Always On VPN.

Reserve your copy today. Pre-order Implementing Always On VPN now!

Chapter List

  1. Always On VPN Overview
  2. Plan an Always On VPN Deployment
  3. Prepare the Infrastructure
  4. Configure Windows Server for Always On VPN
  5. Provision Always On VPN clients
  6. Advanced Configuration
  7. Cloud Deployments
  8. Deploy Certificates with Intune
  9. Integrating Azure MFA
  10. High Availability
  11. Monitor and Report
  12. Troubleshooting

Always On VPN Authentication Failure with Azure Conditional Access

Always On VPN Clients Prompted for Authentication when Accessing Internal Resources

Integrating Microsoft Azure Conditional Access with Windows 10 Always On VPN has several important benefits. The most important is that it allows administrators to improve their security posture by enforcing access polices that can be dynamically applied. For example, requiring multifactor authentication (MFA) for privileged users (e.g., administrators) or sign-ins that appear to be risky, the type of device they are connecting with, the health of the endpoint, and much more.

Authentication Failure

When configuring Always On VPN to support Azure Conditional Access, administrators may expeirence a failed authentication during preliminary testing. Specifically, an event ID 20227 from the RasClient source may be encountered with the following error message.

“The user <username> dialed a connection named <connection name> which has failed. The error code returned on failure is 812.”

Looking at the event logs on the Network Policy Server (NPS) server reveals an event ID 6273 from the Microsoft Windows security auditing source with Reason Code 258 and the following Reason.

“The revocation function was unable to check revocation for the certificate.”

Root Cause

When Azure Conditional Access is configured for Always On VPN, a short-lived certificate (1 hour lifetime) is provisioned by Azure. This certificate does not include revocation information because, by design, a short-lived certificate does not need to be revoked. However, by default NPS always checks revocation when client authentication certificates are used for authentication. Since the certificate does not include this information, certificate revocation fails.

Resolution

The way to resolve this issue is to disable certificate revocation checking for Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) authentication requests. To do this, open an elevated PowerShell window on the NPS server and run the following command.

New-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RasMan\PPP\EAP\13\’ -Name IgnoreNoRevocationCheck -PropertyType DWORD -Value 1 -Force

Once complete, restart the NPS server for the changes to take effect.

Additional Information

Windows 10 Always On VPN Network Policy Server (NPS) Load Balancing

Windows 10 Always On VPN Network Policy Server (NPS) Server 2019 Bug

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