Power BI Transport Layer Security Settings (TLS)

Introduction:

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol that provides Secure communications. There are different versions of this protocol with the latest one being TLS 1.2. With all the crazy updates that Microsoft comes with, many of the programs, web services. etc. have enforced TLS 1.2 to be mandatory for communicating over the network. The previous versions of TLS are not supported in many of these programs and sooner or later they will deprecate for sure.

Lucky for us, after the October 2018 update, Power BI Desktop now respects this need for TLS 1.2 and recognizes the Windows registry key in your System. You can enable or disable which version of TLS protocol is needed and Power BI will use that version accordingly.

Steps to disable older TLS:

1. Open your regedit by searching for ‘regedit’ in the search box of the taskbar
   Note: Changes in the regedit can cause serious changes in your system. Please take a backup of your regedit before proceeding and import the backup just in case your system starts to act funny.
2. Go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client] and make the following changes

1. 1. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client] “Enabled”=dword:00000000
   2. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client] “DisabledByDefault”=dword:00000001
2. This will disable your Power BI from using your older version of TLS 1.0 by default

Steps to update your TLS to 1.2

1. Go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Client] and make the following changes

1. 1. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Client] “Enabled”=dword:00000001
   2. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Client] “DisabledByDefault”=dword:00000000

2. This will enforce your applications to use the latest TLS

Power BI Desktop will respect the registry keys specified on those pages, and only create connections using the right version of TLS. For further documentation on TLS, you can refer the microsoft document below
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/security/tls/tls-registry-settings