When people talk about BYOD, it usually sounds like freedom. Let employees work from their own laptops and phones. Save on hardware. Everyone is happy.
In reality, BYOD is always about one uncomfortable question: how do you control access when you do not control the device?
This is where Microsoft Entra Global Secure Access comes in.
Global Secure Access is not a traditional VPN. It is a client based access model that intercepts traffic destined for defined corporate resources and routes it through Microsoft’s Security Service Edge. Identity becomes the control plane. The network becomes a transport mechanism.
In a BYOD scenario, the device does not have to be fully managed through Intune. It goes through Entra device registration, which creates a device object in the directory linked to the user. That object participates in policy evaluation. That is all. No automatic MDM enforcement. No guaranteed compliance baseline.
When the Global Secure Access client is installed on Windows or macOS, it deploys a network filter and builds traffic routing profiles. Traffic targeting published private applications is redirected through Microsoft’s edge, where Conditional Access, user risk, device state and session policies are evaluated in real time.
The critical distinction here is between registered and compliant.
Registered means the device exists in Entra as an identity bound asset.
Compliant means it has passed policy validation through Intune.
In a pure BYOD configuration, you are often working only with registered devices. That means you cannot inherently guarantee disk encryption, OS patch level, endpoint protection or configuration standards unless you layer additional controls on top.
Conditional Access therefore becomes the primary enforcement engine. Policies can require that the device is registered, that MFA is enforced, that the user risk is acceptable, and that access occurs via the Global Secure Access client. If traffic bypasses the client, access can be denied.
On mobile platforms, the model relies on a VPN profile created by the relevant Microsoft agent. Traffic to protected resources is channelled through Microsoft’s cloud edge, where policy is applied at the session layer. This is not just token validation. It is proxy based enforcement combined with identity evaluation.
Another technical nuance is that Global Secure Access does not automatically tunnel all device traffic. Routing is profile driven. Only traffic directed to defined private endpoints or applications flows through the Secure Service Edge. General internet traffic remains local. This reduces performance overhead, but it demands careful design. Misconfiguration creates blind spots.
There is also a tenant context limitation. If a device is already joined or registered with a specific Entra tenant, the client operates within that context. Multi tenant switching is not seamless. For consultants and contractors, this matters.
Architecturally, this represents a shift from trusted networks to trusted identities with contextual validation. BYOD becomes manageable at the session and identity layer rather than at the hardware layer. Control moves from perimeter firewalls to cloud enforced policy.
The decision to enable BYOD through Global Secure Access is not primarily technical. It is architectural. If your Conditional Access framework is mature, if your private applications are properly segmented, and if you understand that a registered device is only a minimal trust signal, the model can be both flexible and defensible.
If those foundations are weak, you are simply extending your attack surface under a modern name.
Global Secure Access does not remove risk. It redistributes it into policy design. Whether that is an advantage depends entirely on how disciplined your identity architecture really is.