Ensuring Security Compliance: Checking Root Certificates on Intune-Enrolled Devices

In today’s digital landscape, maintaining a secure IT environment is paramount. One crucial aspect of this is ensuring that all devices in your organization trust the correct root certificates. This helps to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and ensures secure communications. For organizations using Microsoft Intune for device management, this process can be streamlined with compliance policies. In this article, we'll explore how to create a compliance policy in Intune to check for the presence of a specific root certificate on end-user systems.

Why Check for Root Certificates?

Root certificates form the foundation of trust in your IT infrastructure. They validate the authenticity of websites, email servers, and other services. If an end-user device lacks the necessary root certificate, it may be vulnerable to various security threats. Ensuring that all enrolled devices have the correct root certificates helps to uphold the integrity and security of your organization's communications.

Steps to Implement Compliance Policy in Intune

1. Create a Compliance Policy in Intune

Sign in to Microsoft Endpoint Manager:

Go to Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Navigate to Devices:

In the left-hand navigation pane, select Devices.

Select Compliance policies:

Under Devices, choose Compliance policies.

Create Policy:

Select Create Policy and choose the platform (Windows 10 and later, iOS/iPadOS, Android, etc.) for which you want to create the compliance policy.

Configure Settings:

Provide the necessary information for the policy. Under Settings, add a Custom Compliance Setting.

2. Add a Custom Compliance Setting

Define the Custom Compliance Setting:

Custom compliance settings allow you to define custom rules using PowerShell scripts. This is how we will check for the root certificate.

Create a PowerShell Script:

Write a PowerShell script to check for the presence of a specific root certificate. Here’s an example script:

PowerShell

$thumbprint = "YOUR_CERTIFICATE_THUMBPRINT_HERE" $cert = Get-ChildItem -Path Cert:\LocalMachine\Root | Where-Object { $_.Thumbprint -eq $thumbprint } if ($cert) { Write-Output "Certificate found" exit 0 } else { Write-Output "Certificate not found" exit 1 }

Replace YOUR_CERTIFICATE_THUMBPRINT_HERE with the thumbprint of the certificate you are looking for.

Upload the PowerShell Script to Intune:

Save the PowerShell script and upload it to Intune as a custom compliance script.

Configure the Compliance Policy:

In the compliance policy settings, under Custom compliance settings, add a new setting:

Name: Check for Root Certificate

Description: This setting checks if the required root certificate is present on the device.

Script file: Upload the PowerShell script you created.

3. Assign the Compliance Policy to User Groups

After creating the policy, assign it to the appropriate user or device groups to ensure all relevant devices are checked.

4. Monitor Compliance Status

Check Compliance Reports:

Monitor the compliance status of devices from the Reports section in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center. Devices that do not have the required root certificate will be marked as non-compliant.

Conclusion

By leveraging Intune’s compliance policies and custom PowerShell scripts, organizations can effectively ensure that all managed devices maintain the necessary root certificates. This not only strengthens your security posture but also ensures a higher level of trust within your IT infrastructure.

Implementing these steps will help you maintain a secure and compliant environment, protecting your organization from potential threats and vulnerabilities associated with missing root certificates.