Migrating to Cloud RADIUS from On-Prem

What You’ll Take Away

• Why enterprises move from on-prem RADIUS or Microsoft NPS to Cloud RADIUS
• How to design a migration that avoids downtime and preserves security
• How to integrate identity providers and PKI during cutover
• How SecureW2 enforces Dynamic Issuance, Live Enforcement, and Post-Issuance Integrity
• How to troubleshoot common migration issues, from certificate chain mismatches to policy translation
• When expert services accelerate and de-risk enterprise migration

Understanding RADIUS and Why Cloud Migration Matters

RADIUS is the AAA control plane for 802.1X Wi-Fi, wired access, and many VPNs. Standard RADIUS uses UDP for authentication and accounting. This implies shared secret management and UDP reliability concerns that apply to both on-prem and cloud deployments. RadSec, which is RADIUS over TLS on TCP as defined in RFC 6614, addresses encryption and transport reliability when needed.

On-prem servers such as Microsoft NPS or FreeRADIUS can support modern features, including integration with cloud identity providers and dynamic policies. The operational reality is that achieving high availability, global scale, and continuous policy enforcement often requires significant custom work and ongoing maintenance.

A cloud-native RADIUS platform removes appliance sprawl, provides elastic scaling, and enables continuous trust by ingesting real-time signals from identity, device, and security systems. Traditional RADIUS validates certificates during each EAP-TLS authentication. The gap is usually operational, for example limited revocation checks, slow policy changes, or weak posture awareness during and after authentication. Cloud RADIUS with Dynamic PKI closes that gap.

How to Design and Execute a Cloud RADIUS Migration

Step 1: Assess Current Infrastructure

Create a detailed inventory:

• Current RADIUS or NPS versions, policies, network ACLs, and client definitions
• Identity providers in scope, for example Active Directory, Okta, or Entra ID
• PKI components, certificate templates, validity periods, OCSP or CRL settings
• Network devices, such as controllers, APs, switches, VPN concentrators, and their RADIUS client settings
• Group Policy Objects, DNS entries, and hard-coded server IPs

Call out protocol and vendor specifics:

• EAP methods in use and endpoint support
• Vendor-Specific Attributes, attribute names, and case sensitivity
• Realm routing rules and any proxy chains

Step 2: Plan Connectivity, Security, and Compliance

• Define Internet connectivity and firewall rules for Cloud RADIUS endpoints. Document UDP 1812 and 1813. Add TCP for RadSec when used.
• Validate latency budgets for authentication across regions. Measure baseline on-prem latency and set targets for cloud.
• Document where authentication data is processed and stored. Address data residency and sovereignty for regulated regions.
• Define access controls for cloud management consoles. Use SSO, least privilege, and audit logging.

Step 3: Stand Up the Cloud RADIUS Service

• Provision SecureW2 Cloud RADIUS with regional presence that matches user populations.
• Integrate the identity provider. Map attributes for UPN, group membership, and device identity.
• Stand up or connect PKI. Use SecureW2 Dynamic PKI, or federate an existing CA. Publish full chains and OCSP locations.

Step 4: Prepare Certificate Lifecycle Management

• Automate enrollment and renewal with ACME, ACME Device Attestation, or Dynamic SCEP.
• Define certificate lifetimes appropriate to device class. Shorter for high-risk or ephemeral systems.
• Ensure revocation availability. OCSP is typically near real time due to caching. Use stapling to improve freshness.

Step 5: Pilot and Parallel Operation

• Select a representative pilot covering major OS versions, device types, and EAP methods.
• Point pilot sites or SSIDs to Cloud RADIUS while keeping on-prem active.
• Validate policy translation, dynamic VLAN attributes, and CoA.
• Test roaming behavior, renewal windows, revocation flows, and RadSec if used.

Step 6: Full Cutover and Rollback Planning

• Update all NAS clients to the new endpoints. Replace IPs with DNS names to simplify future changes.
• Keep on-prem servers in warm standby during an agreed stabilization period.
• Define rollback triggers, for example success rate thresholds or latency SLO breaches.
• Document recovery time objectives and the steps to re-point clients if needed.

Step 7: Decommissioning and Optimization

• Decommission on-prem servers only after logs confirm no remaining traffic.
• Tune policies based on observed usage. Adjust load balancing, health checks, and regional failover.
• Update operations runbooks, escalation paths, and staff training.

SecureW2’s Defense-in-Depth Model

SecureW2 treats each certificate as a living trust object that adapts to current risk.

Layer 1: Dynamic Issuance

Before issuance, SecureW2 validates identity, device posture, and risk. Certificates are hardware-bound and policy-scoped, using Dynamic SCEP or ACME Device Attestation.

Layer 2: Live Enforcement

During and after authentication, the Policy Engine ingests telemetry from IdPs, MDM or UEM, and EDR or SIEM. Certificates can be revoked or quarantined instantly. CoA updates VLANs or ACLs mid-session.

Layer 3: Post-Issuance Integrity

CertIQ ML detects duplication, spoofing, or abnormal usage that static CRL or OCSP checks might miss. RADIUS decisions stay aligned to real-time trust instead of static assumptions.

Migration Complexity You Should Plan For

Attribute and Policy Translation

• Normalize attribute names, data types, and case sensitivity across vendors.
• Map dynamic VLAN attributes, for example Tunnel-Type, Tunnel-Medium-Type, Tunnel-Private-Group-ID.
• Validate Vendor-Specific Attributes and realm routing rules.

Network Architecture Changes

• Update firewall rules for Cloud RADIUS.
• Move NAS clients to DNS-based RADIUS endpoints.
• Reconfigure load balancers and health checks.

Certificate Trust Chain Migration

• Distribute new roots and intermediates to all devices.
• Support mixed chains during transition.
• Consider server certificate pinning behavior on older supplicants.

Identity and Device Management

• Confirm SAML or LDAP flows per IdP. Account for multi-forest AD.
• Align MDM profiles, supplicant settings, and compliance reporting.

Data Residency and Compliance

• Document regions of processing and storage.
• Capture audit trails for authentication and accounting during and after migration.

Operations, Performance, and Cost Planning

• Establish baseline metrics on the legacy platform: request rate, success rate, median and tail latency.
• Monitor Cloud RADIUS latency, EAP round-trip counts, and failure codes.
• Plan capacity for busy-hour authentications and renewal bursts.
• Train operations teams on new consoles, dashboards, and incident procedures.
• Model total cost of ownership. Include bandwidth for cloud authentication, licensing differences, and reduced hardware maintenance.

Troubleshooting Common Cloud RADIUS Migration Issues

Where Cloud RADIUS Fits in the Enterprise Stack

• Identity Provider, for example Okta, Entra ID, or Active Directory, supplies authoritative user and group data.
• Endpoint Management, for example Intune or Jamf, pushes certificate profiles, enforces secure key storage where supported, and detects device drift.
• Security Monitoring, for example SIEM and EDR, feeds posture to SecureW2’s Policy Engine for instant policy changes or revocation.
• SecureW2 Cloud RADIUS validates certificate chains and device posture at each authentication and can use RadSec for TLS-protected, reliable transport when required.

This architecture makes every decision reflect the device’s current risk, not just static credentials.

When to Consider Expert-Led Deployment

SecureW2’s professional services team helps you:

• Build detailed migration roadmaps with parallel operations and clear rollback steps
• Automate certificate lifecycle management across mixed fleets using ACME or Dynamic SCEP
• Integrate posture-based authorization, CoA, and dynamic VLANs
• Train staff, update procedures, and validate compliance

The result is a migration that avoids downtime, preserves security, and creates a stable foundation for Zero Trust access.

Final Thoughts

Moving from on-prem RADIUS or NPS to SecureW2 Cloud RADIUS is about more than hosting. It is about continuous, adaptive trust. Traditional RADIUS validates the certificate during each EAP-TLS exchange. Cloud RADIUS with Dynamic PKI adds real-time revocation, live posture checks, and post-issuance anomaly detection.

By combining Dynamic Issuance, Live Enforcement, and Post-Issuance Integrity, SecureW2 turns each certificate into a living trust object that matches the moment. Your organization gains a resilient, globally scalable authentication platform for Wi-Fi, VPN, and application access.