If you’ve ever run a café, you know the key to success isn’t just brewing good coffee, it’s keeping the milk cold, the till locked, and the regulars happy. Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365 (W365) are much the same: you’ve got to serve up a smooth, secure experience while making sure the behind-the-scenes hygiene is on point.

For Australian organisations, that hygiene is often measured by the ASD Essential 8 – a set of mitigation strategies published by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). And while reaching Maturity Level 3 (the top shelf whiskey of compliance) is the long-term goal, most enterprises aim for Maturity Level 2 – the practical baseline where security meets operational reality with minimal user experience impact.

This series will show you how each of the eight controls can be implemented in Microsoft Cloud VDI (Azure Virtual Desktop & Windows 365).

What is the ASD Essential 8?

The Essential 8 is a cyber maturity set of controls designed to help organisations protect against common cyber threats. Each control is scored across three levels of maturity:

• Level 1: Basic hygiene
• Level 2: Reasonably resistant against adversaries with moderate capability
• Level 3: Strong defence against more sophisticated, determined adversaries

For most businesses running AVD or W365, Level 2 is the “sweet spot” – achievable without paralysing operations or end user experience, but still significantly hardening the attack surface.

How it Works in Cloud VDI

In a cloud-hosted desktop world, applying the Essential 8 comes with nuances:

• Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD):

  • You’re responsible for image management, patching, and some underlying infra choices.
  • More flexibility but also more operational work.

• Windows 365 (W365):

  • Microsoft handles more of the “plumbing”.
  • You enforce Essential 8 primarily through Intune policies, M365 security, and Conditional Access.

The Essential 8 is technology-agnostic – but implementing it in these VDI environments means mapping controls to Azure-native services and Microsoft security stacks.

Real-World Impact

Getting to Maturity Level 2 in AVD/W365 isn’t just a compliance tick-box – it:

• Reduces the chance of zero-day exploits wrecking your VDI environment
• Aligns with government/industry compliance requirements (especially in AU sectors like health, finance, and gov suppliers)
• Simplifies audits – you can confidently demonstrate mapped controls
• Improves user trust; fewer disruptions from macro-based malware or admin misuse

In short: it lets you serve desktops with confidence, like a barista who knows the milk jug’s been cleaned.

Architectural View

Here’s a simple high-level view mapping Essential 8 controls with Cloud VDI layers:

This series will step through how each control translates into tangible configurations inside AVD & W365.

Implementation Approach

We’ll take each of the eight controls and break them down like so:

1. What the control means in practice
2. How it applies to AVD and/or W365
3. Implementation via Azure Portal and Bicep
4. Gotchas & edge cases
5. Best practices

Gotchas & Edge Cases

Right from the outset, some challenges to keep in mind:

• Shared Responsibility: W365 abstracts away VM management, but you still must configure policies to align with Essential 8.
• FSLogix Dependencies (AVD): Application & OS patching interacts heavily with golden images and profile containers.
• Licensing: Some controls (App Control, Advanced MFA scenarios, Defender features) require higher-tier licensing.
• Operational Rhythm: Essential 8 isn’t “set and forget” – it’s about ongoing governance.
• Line of Business (LoB) Apps: The only application within my test environment will be Microsoft Office 365 Apps, your LoB apps may have different requirements, capabilities, limitations and restrictions that you need to consider when applying E8 ML2.

Best Practices

• Use security baselines in Intune as a quick start.
• Map every Essential 8 control to a measurable outcome (e.g., “100% AVD session hosts patched within 48 hours”).
• Build policy-as-code with Bicep where possible; align controls with CI/CD culture.
• Pilot each control gradually – a poorly tested application control policy can stop users faster than a flat white served cold.

Learn More

• Australian Cyber Security Centre – Essential Eight
• Microsoft Learn – Azure Virtual Desktop Documentation
• Microsoft Learn – Windows 365 Documentation
• Microsoft Learn – Intune Endpoint Security