All posts in category Security

Arizona Systems Management User Group March 2025

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the Arizona Systems Management User Group (AZSMUG) at their next user group meeting on Friday, March 7, at 9:00 AM MST. I am presenting on the topic of Certificate Deployment Strategies with Microsoft Intune.

Intune and Certificates

My session at AZSMUG will provide an overview of issuing and managing certificates with Microsoft Intune. We’ll begin by examining common scenarios for certificate authentication and explore various delivery methods, including PKCS and SCEP. Additionally, we’ll discuss supporting technologies such as the Network Device Enrollment Service (NDES) and review deployment strategies and high availability options for the Intune Certificate Connector. The session will also cover Cloud PKI for Intune, integration with on-premises Active Directory, and best practices for securing certificate lifecycles and key management in enterprise environments.

Register Now

If you are in the Phoenix area and would like to attend the user group meeting on Friday, March 7, you will find the registration link here. Hope to see you there!

Additional Information

Arizona Systems Management User Group

Intune and Certificates Masterclass

Always On VPN and SQL Target Principal Name Incorrect

Microsoft Always On VPN provides seamless and transparent remote access to corporate applications and data. In most cases, accessing resources over the VPN works the same as on-premises. However, a few folks have asked recently about an issue they found when using the SQL Server Management Studio (SMSS) to connect to a remote SQL server over Always On VPN.

Principal Name Incorrect

Administrators may encounter the following error message when using SMSS to connect to Microsoft SQL servers over an Always On VPN connection.

“The target principal name is incorrect. Cannot generate SSPI context. (Microsoft SQL Server)”

Resolution

There are a few different ways to resolve this issue. Choose the option that works best in your environment.

VPN Configuration

For Always On VPN deployments with Windows 11 24H2 and later clients, add the following setting to your XML configuration file.

<UseRasCredentials>false</UseRasCredentials>

For clients older than Windows 11 24H2, you must edit the rasphone.pbk file setting as follows.

UseRasCredentials=0

Group Policy

Optionally, a Group Policy Object (GPO) can be created and applied to target endpoints. For testing, you can enable this setting using the local group policy editor (gpedit.msc). Using either method, enable the following group policy setting.

Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > Network access: Do not allow storage of passwords and credentials for network authentication = Enabled

Registry Editor

This method can be used for local testing. Open the Windows Registry Editor (regedit.exe) on a test client and create the following entry.

Key = HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Name = DisableDomainCreds
Type = DWORD
Value = 1

PowerShell

The following PowerShell command will also create the required registry entry. Administrators can run the command interactively or deploy it via automation.

Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa’ -Name DisableDomainCreds -Value 1