A read-only status string reporting the health of TunnelGuard, Nortel's endpoint compliance-checking feature for VPN clients. TunnelGuard is what enforces that connecting clients meet security policy, such as antivirus being up to date, before granting full network access, so an admin watches this to know whether that compliance gate is actually being enforced. If tunnelGuardStatus reports "Alert," the admin should assume client compliance checks may not be running and treat all newly connected VPN users as unverified until the service is restored.