Microsoft Intune Connector for Active Directory security update
As part of Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative, we’re making an important security change which will impact customers deploying Microsoft Entra hybrid joined devices with Windows Autopilot and provide guidance on how to prepare. New capabilities or improvements aren’t planned as part of this security change. Review Microsoft’s recommendations based on your organization’s needs. Updated connector Today, Windows Autopilot uses the Intune Connector for Active Directory to deploy devices that are Microsoft Entra hybrid joined. To strengthen security in our customers’ environments, we’ve updated the Intune Connector for Active Directory to use a Managed Service Account (MSA) instead of a SYSTEM account. The old connector which uses the local SYSTEM account will no longer be available for download in Intune and will stop being supported in late May 2025. At that point, we’ll stop accepting enrollments from the old connector build. Follow the guidance provided below to update your environment to the new connector. The old connector build will continue to work for existing customers who already have it installed until the end of support date and is available for download in the Microsoft Download Center if needed. What is a Managed Service Account (MSA)? MSAs are managed domain accounts that have automatic password management and are generally granted just enough permissions and privileges to perform their duties. Standalone MSAs can only be used on a single domain joined machine and can only access resources within that domain. An MSA can run services on a computer in a secure and easy to maintain manner, while maintaining the capability to connect to network resources as a specific user principal. All these reasons make them a better fit for the Intune Connector for Active Directory than the current SYSTEM account option. Comparing the account permissions required between the new and old connector Old Connector New Connector Logged on account SYSTEM Domain\MSA Password management Set by user, subject to domain rules Managed by domain only – automatically reset Privilege set size (see notes for more details) MAX 5 Privileges: SeMachineAccountPrivilege - Disabled default SeChangeNotifyPrivilege - Enabled Default SeImpersonatePrivilege - Enabled Default SeCreateGlobalPrivilege - Enabled Default SeIncreaseWorkingSetPrivilege – Disabled default Registry access rights Full, implicit Read write, explicit Enrollment certificate rights Full, implicit Full, explicit Create computer object rights (required for hybrid Autopilot scenario) If connector is on the same machine as domain controller, unlimited If connector is not on the domain controller, delegation required Explicit delegation required Setting up the connector Before you begin First, you need to uninstall the existing connector by: Uninstalling from the Settings app on Windows Then, uninstalling using the ODJConnectorBootstrapper.exe (select Uninstall). To install and set up the new connector, you need the following minimum requirements: Downloading the connector build from Intune: Microsoft Entra account with Intune Service Administrator permissions Installation: .Net 4.7.2 Windows Server with 2008 R2 functional level Local administrator permissions Setting up the connector: Microsoft Entra account with an Intune license assigned and Intune Service Administrator permission Domain account with local administrator privileges Domain account should have permission to create msDS-ManagedServiceAccount objects Downloading the connector You can download the new connector from the Intune admin center and install in your environment. To set it up, launch the connector wizard and choose Sign In and sign in with a Microsoft Entra account with Intune service admin permissions and you’ll notice a new Configure Managed Service Account option. After signing in, the connector will enroll and only the Configure Managed Service Account option will be available. The account with Intune admin permissions should select that option to complete set up. For more detailed steps on installing the connector, review: Install the Intune Connector. irectory installation shows the MSA has been configured. Configuring organizational units (OUs) for domain join By default, MSAs don’t have access to create computer objects in any OU. If you wish to use a custom OU for domain join, you’ll need to update the ODJConnectorEnrollmentWiazard.exe.config file. This can be done at any time (either before enrollment, or after the connector is enrolled): Update ODJConnectorEnrollmentWizard.exe.config: Default location is “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Intune\ODJConnector\ODJConnectorEnrollmentWizard” Add all the OUs required in OrganizationalUnitsUsedForOfflineDomainJoin OU name should be the distinguished name (see Additional information section) Note that the MSA is only granted access to the OUs configured in this file (and the default Computers container). If any OUs are removed from this list, completing the rest of the steps will revoke access. Open ODJConnectorEnrollmentWizard (or restart it if it was open) and select the “Configure Managed Service Account” button. Success! – A pop up will appear showing success. Using the Intune Connector with multiple domains Customers who are already using the connector with more than one domain will be able to use the new connector by setting up a separate server per domain and installing a separate connector build for each domain. Configuring the connector The Intune Connector for Active Directory needs to be installed on each domain that you plan to use for domain join. If you need to have a second account redundancy, you will need to install the connector on a different server (in the same domain). Follow the steps above to ensure the connector is configured correctly, and that the MSA has appropriate permissions on the desired OUs. Ensure that all connectors are present in the in the Microsoft Intune admin center (Devices > Enrollment > Windows > under Windows Autopilot, select Intune Connector for Active Directory) and that the version is greater than 6.2501.2000.5: A list of Intune Connectors for Active Directory and their version in the Microsoft Intune admin center. Configure Domain Join profile: Follow the steps for configuring a domain join profile: Create a domain join profile for each domain that you want to use for hybrid joining devices during Autopilot. Target the domain join profile to the appropriate device groups. Example of 2 domain join profiles targeted to different groups, with different domain names configured: Expected result: Connector in domain F11.F1.com will only join domain F11.F1.com. Connector in domain F12.F1.com will only join domain F12.F1.com. Additional information Retrieving Organizational Unit Distinguished Name If you need to customize the OUs that the MSA has access to, here are two easy methods to retrieve the distinguished name for these OUs: Let’s assume we have the following structure: Powershell Get-ADOrganizationalUnit (ActiveDirectory) | Microsoft Learn Get “=TestOUWithSpecialChars=”: PS Cmd: Get-ADOrganizationalUnit -Filter 'Name -like "*TestOUWithSpecialChar*"' | Format-Table Name, DistinguishedName Output: “OU=\=TestOUWithSpecialChars\=,DC=modesh2,DC=nttest,DC=microsoft,DC=com” Note, ‘=’ is escaped Get “NestedOU” PS Cmd: Get-ADOrganizationalUnit -Filter 'Name -like "NestedOU"' | Format-Table Name, DistinguishedName Output: “OU=NestedOU,OU=\=TestOUWithSpecialChars\=,DC=modesh2,DC=nttest,DC=microsoft,DC=com” Note, ‘=’ is still escaped Active Directory Users and Computers Select “View” from the menu, and enable “Advanced Features” Right click on the specific OU and click “Properties” Navigate to the “Attribute Editor” tab Select “distinguishedName” attribute and click “View” Summary The new connector aims to enhance security by reducing unnecessary privileges and permissions associated with the local SYSTEM account. This blog describes how to set up the new connector and configure it for your organization. Make sure to install the new connector by late May 2025 before the old connector becomes unsupported. If you have any questions, leave a comment on this post or reach out to us on X @IntuneSuppTeam.Cloud-native Windows endpoints: Begin by beginning
By: Jason Sandys – Principal Product Manager | Microsoft Intune Cloud-native is Microsoft’s goal for all commercial Windows endpoints. By definition, a cloud-native Windows endpoint is joined to Microsoft Entra ID and enrolled in Microsoft Intune. It represents and involves a clean break from on-premises related systems, limitations, and dependencies for device identity and management. This clean break from on-premises dependencies might align with larger organizational goals to reduce or eliminate on-premises infrastructure but doesn’t prevent users from accessing or using existing on-premises resources like file shares, printers, or applications. Cloud-native for Windows endpoints is a large change in thinking for most organizations and thus poses an initial challenge of how to even begin on this journey. This article provides you with guidance on how to begin and how to embrace this new model. For additional guidance that includes a higher-level discussion of what to do with existing endpoints, see: Best practices in moving to cloud native endpoint management | Microsoft 365 Blog to learn more. Proof of concept The first step is to begin with a proof of concept (POC). For any new technology, methodology, or solution, POCs offer numerous advantages. Specifically, they enable you to evaluate the new “thing” with minimal risk while building your skills and gaining stakeholder buy-in. Because the exact end state of Windows endpoints is highly variable among organizations and even within an organization, a POC for cloud-native Windows enables you to take an iterative approach for defining and deploying these endpoints. This iterative approach involves smaller waves of users and endpoints within your organization. It’s ultimately up to you to define which endpoints or users should be in each wave, but you should align this to your endpoint lifecycle and refresh plan. Aligning to your endpoint lifecycle allows you to minimize impact to your users by consolidating the delivery of new endpoints with the changeover from hybrid join to Microsoft Entra join, which requires a Windows reset or fresh Windows instance. Additional significant criteria to consider for which users and endpoints to include in each wave are the organizational user personas and endpoint roles. An iterative POC enables you to break work effort and challenges into more manageable pieces and address them individually or sequentially. This is important since some (often many) challenges related to adopting cloud-native Windows endpoints are isolated or not applicable to all endpoints or users in the organization. Some challenges may even remain unknown until they arise, and the only way to learn about them is by conducting actual production testing and evaluation. You don’t need to address or solve every challenge to successfully begin your journey to cloud-native Windows endpoints. An easy example for this is users that exclusively use SaaS applications: these users’ endpoints already have limited (if any) true on-premises service or application dependencies, and they likely face few, if any, challenges in moving to cloud-native Windows endpoints. Initial cloud-native Windows configuration There are some common activities that need to occur before you deploy your first cloud-native Windows endpoints. Keep in mind that this list is simply the steps to begin the iterative process, it’s not all-inclusive or representative of the final state. For a detailed walkthrough on configuring these items (and more), see the following detailed tutorial: Get started with cloud-native Windows endpoints. Identify the user personas and endpoint types within your organization. These typically vary among organizations, so there’s no standard template to follow. However, you should align your POC to these personas and endpoint types to limit each wave’s impact and scope of necessary change. Configure your baseline policies. Implement a minimum viable set of policies within Intune to deploy to all endpoints. Base these policies on your organizational requirements rather than what has been previously implemented in group policy (or elsewhere). We strongly suggest starting as cleanly as possible with this activity and initially including only what is necessary to meet the security requirements of your organization. Configure Windows Autopatch. Keeping Windows up to date is critical, and Windows Autopatch offers the best path to doing this (whether a Windows endpoint is cloud-native or not). Configure Windows applications. As with policies, this should be a minimal set of applications to deploy to your POC endpoints and can include Win32 based and Microsoft Store based applications. Configure Windows Autopilot. Windows Autopilot enables quick and seamless Windows provisioning without the overhead of classic on-premises OS deployment methods. With Windows Autopilot, the provisioning process for cloud-native Windows endpoints is quick and easy. Configure Delivery Optimization. Windows uses Delivery Optimization for downloading most items from the cloud. By default, Delivery Optimization leverages peers to cache and download content locally. Edit the default configuration to define which managed endpoints are peers or to disable peer content sharing. Enable Windows Hello for Business and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) using Conditional Access. Enable Cloud Kerberos Trust for Windows Hello for Business to enable seamless access to on-premises resources. These items significantly increase your organization’s security posture and place your organization well on the Zero Trust path. As the iterative POC process evolves to include more user personas and endpoint roles, you can add more functional policy requirements and applications. This will involve some discovery as you learn about the actual needs of these various personas and roles. Since you aren’t targeting everything from day one, you don’t need to have all requirements defined up front or solutions for every potential issue. Additional suggestions, tips, and guidance Don’t assume something does or doesn’t work on cloud-native Windows endpoints. The POC process enables you to iteratively test and evaluate applications, services, resources, and everything else in your environment – most of which isn’t typically documented. It might simply be part of the tacit or tribal knowledge within your organization. In general, you’ll find that nearly everything works just as it did before Windows cloud-native. Document everything. As you implement, document the “what” as well as the “why” for everything you configure. This allows you and your colleagues to come back at any time and understand or refresh your memory for your cloud-native Windows implementation, as well as many other things in the environment. Microsoft doesn’t expect organizations to rapidly convert their entire estate of Windows endpoints to cloud-native. Instead, we recommend taking it slow, being deliberate, and using the iterative approach outlined above by aligning to your hardware refresh cycle to minimize impact on users. This also provides you with time to prove the solution, address gaps, and overcome challenges as you discover them without disrupting productivity. Use the built-in Conditional Access policy templates to quickly get started with MFA and other Conditional Access capabilities. The templates enable you to implement Conditional Access policies that align with our recommendations without experimentation. Accessing on-premises resources including file shares from a cloud-native Windows endpoint works with little to no configuration. Refer to the documentation for more details: How SSO to on-premises resources works on Microsoft Entra joined devices. Call to action Begin exploring your cloud-native Windows POC today. Taking this first step now will allow your organization to start reaping the benefits of enhanced security, streamlined management, and improved user experience sooner. Every organization is unique, so there’s no blueprint for comprehensively implementing cloud-native Windows. However, you don’t need a comprehensive blueprint to be successful, you just need to begin and slowly expand adoption throughout your organization when and where it makes sense. The guidance provided above along with the getting started tutorial should give you the information, tools, and confidence to move forward with decoupling your endpoints and users from your on-premises anchors and fully embrace cloud-native Windows. For a more detailed and in-depth discussion on adopting cloud-native Windows, including planning and execution, see Learn more about cloud-native endpoints. If you have any questions, leave a comment below or reach out to us on X @IntuneSuppTeam. Additional Blogs 3 benefits of going cloud native | Microsoft 365 Blog How to achieve cloud-native endpoint management with Microsoft Intune | Microsoft 365 Blog Myths and misconceptions: Windows 11 and cloud native | Windows IT Pro Blog (microsoft.com)
