Jamf enhances managed device tool suite to boost iPhone & Mac security

Apple's new fall releases of iOS 13, iPadOS, and macOS Catalina brought a slew of new features and the management company Jamf has announced updated software to take advantage of them.

Jamf provides tools to help organizations from small workplaces, through schools and on to the largest enterprise corporations. Its systems let these organizations deploy their own software to their staff's devices, and manages the support of them too.

In this year's Jamf conference, its tenth annual unveiling of updates, the company described overall improvements as well as ones for more specific situations for its 15 million managed devices, and 100,000 community members.

The Jamf management suite now has a new enrollment experience for more easily adding new members of staff and their Apple devices. It also improved accessibility support, and provides single sign-on support with Jamf Connect.

Similarly, a mobile system called Jamf Connect was announced, extending the idea of a single identity per staff member, to mobile devices. On stage, Jamf demoed being able to log in to a Windows PC by using Face ID on an iPhone. An iPhone is now able to replicate both a FIDO Security Key and smart card for authentication without passwords.

Specific user cases

For schools, Jamf has announced new teacher-facing features such as the ability to create an ad-hoc classroom, create better lesson plans, and filter content.

Jamf Pro for administrators in education saw the release of a new app workflow that allows teachers to streamline a way to request new iOS apps for their classrooms. This easily allows educators to request an app, for IT to immediately receive the request, and then be able to act on that request.

Using the new Jamf Connect for mobile, large iPad deployments for schools is also now easier than ever and simplifies the provisioning process.

Last year at JNUC 2018 Jamf debuted Setup and Reset to assist in iPhone and iPad deployments.

Jamf Protect

Available now to United States-based customers, the newly announced Jamf Protect is built on Apple's native security tools such as XProtect and Gatekeeper and extends them to organization administrators. Admins are now able to receive real-time alerts from their deployed Macs regarding any important security alerts.

"As Mac continues to grow in the enterprise, a security solution focused on increasing an organization's Mac security posture is needed more than ever," said Dean Hager, CEO, Jamf. "We're excited to bring the same Apple expertise to security that we've brought to device management, and continue to fulfill our mission of helping organizations succeed with Apple."

When an alert comes in they can proactively block, isolate, and take further action on a potential threat. There is secure, granular control over what data is collected and where it is sent which can include an existing SIEM.

Jamf Protect utilizes minimal device resources which reduces the machine's load and yields happy end-users.

Apple's new Endpoint Security Framework was used for Jamf Protect which helps ensure a good macOS experience and support for the latest macOS features.

Center for Internet Security, Inc (CIS) recently issued certification for Jamf Protect to ensure their configurations align with consensus-based standards.

"Cybersecurity challenges are mounting daily, which makes the need for standard configurations imperative," said Curtis Dukes, CIS Executive Vice President of Security Best Practices & Automation Group. "By certifying its product with CIS, Jamf has demonstrated its commitment to actively solve the foundational problem of ensuring standard configurations are used throughout a given enterprise."