Choosing the right IT security partner: How Jamf fulfills your IT security need

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.” — Spanish proverb

This is commonly said to individuals, usually by a parent or someone wiser, as a caution against falling in with the wrong crowd. While the direct translation can vary slightly, the intended meaning conveys that our friends have the power to define who we are.

This is not 100% true all of the time, of course. But even if the statement is only accurate part of the time, who we associate with can affect who we become or at the very least, certainly impacts how we are perceived.

In few places is this impact felt more deeply than in cybersecurity. Particularly, how the partnerships established between organizations and solutions providers make all the difference between stopping an attack or picking up the pieces after a successful data breach.

That is, after all, what we discuss in this blog. How choosing the right security partner affects your organization, including your ability to protect your devices. We also explain how Jamf’s holistic solutions comprehensively secure endpoints across your infrastructure against evolving threats.

The role of compliance in security

A critical component of security is compliance. Whether your organization is part of a highly regulated industry or merely aims to align operational processes and procedures with business policies. Compliance is the act of ensuring that security controls are enforced to keep devices, users and sensitive data protected from internal and external threats.

Why it is critical to choose the right partner to secure your organization?

As we touched upon in the opening paragraph, choosing the right security partner has a far-reaching impact on the overall organization. Its criticality makes it something that should not be taken lightly.

When choosing security partners, it’s important to identify the needs of your organization first and foremost — and never lose sight of them!

Speaking of needs, these will certainly be different from one enterprise to the next just as each company will have different variables that will undoubtedly impact what solutions best serve the company’s needs.

Luckily, there are enough similarities that organizations can utilize the risk assessment data unique to their environment to ask prospective partners the right questions to help vet their solutions and narrow down partners until the business feels confident their resources are sufficiently protected to meet their compliance needs.

Critical questions to consider based on your risk assessment information are:

• Which OS platforms and device types are supported?
• Does the same level of security extend across different OS’s and devices?
• Are the latest patches/updates available on the same day as they’re released?
• Are new features/security features same-day supported, as well?
• Can management, identity and security solutions be integrated?
• If so, how is data integrity maintained when exchanged between solutions?
• Which advanced technologies (e.g., AI/ML) are included to address unknown threats?
• How do vendor solutions aid threat-hunting and incident-response processes?
• Are security and privacy upheld without compromising either, regardless of ownership model?
• What, if any, automation workflows can be implemented to increase efficiency and efficacy?

Enter Jamf Trusted Access

The modern threat landscape includes myriad threats converged and leveraged by threat actors. Their target? Computing devices — both company and personally owned like smartphones, tablets and wearables — used for work-related tasks and accessing enterprise resources globally.

Used by employees, whether from the office or abroad, how work is performed and from which devices have evolved.

So too must how organizations approach cybersecurity. Jamf knows this, that’s why we designed our Trusted Access solution that fuses device management, identity and access, and endpoint security paradigms into one holistic solution that delivers comprehensive protections across your entire infrastructure.

Address modern threat challenges with comprehensive solutions

Jamf's comprehensive approach to managing Apple computers and simultaneously securing mobile devices can betailored to suit your organizational needs and aid in reaching compliance goals. All while maintaining the familiar experience users expect, upholding privacy and enforcing security without one compromising the other.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the components that make up Trusted Access and some of the ways they contribute to a holistic, comprehensive cybersecurity plan and defense-in-depth strategy.

Management (Jamf Pro)

• Foundational device management is a requirement of security, one that begins with zero-touch deployment to ensure devices are secure from the first push of the power button
• Support for multiple ownership models, like BYOD/CYOD/COPE, extending security and privacy protections with parity across each
• Same-day support for Apple patches means organizations can update on their time-table — not ours — confident in the fact that Jamf supports the latest features from day one
• Enabling security policies that revolve around secure configurations, cloud user identities, and permissions to safeguard devices and enforce compliance requirements

Identity (Jamf Connect)

• ZTNA technology blocks access (by default) when a device is identified as being out of compliance, triggering an automated remediation workflow to bring it into compliance
• Streamline the user’s experience while using their preferred device with unified account creation and authentication paired with your cloud identity provider for seamless access to resources through SSO
• Ensures only MDM-enrolled and verified — both corporately owned and BYO devices — are allowed to connect to critical business apps, services and data
• Secure business connections while routing personal traffic directly to the internet; preserving end-user privacy and optimizing the network infrastructure

Security (Jamf Protect)

• Active, continuous monitoring prevents both on-device and in-network threats regardless of device type, operating system, physical location or network used to connect
• Rich telemetry helps IT and Security teams accurately assess security risks on Mac, iOS/iPadOS, Microsoft and Android endpoints
• Align organizational security posture with regulatory goals, as well as maintain compliance with up-to-date guidance from security frameworks, like MITRE ATT&CK
• Incorporate machine learning (ML) for analysis of unknown threats, leveraging advanced AI technology to aid in threat hunting to identify and mitigate novel threats that would otherwise remain undetected or worse, lead to a data breach

Extend security protections holistically across your infrastructure

A layered approach to cybersecurity, better known as defense-in-depth, not only adds multiple controls that threat actors must defeat to compromise devices but is also recommended by numerous agencies and security professionals globally. It’s lauded as a critical necessity for protecting resources hosted in or shared through the cloud.

But security — any security controls for that matter — that prevent one type of threat or that only protect one specific OS or device type are simply not enough security against the modern security landscape and its evolving threats.

Like Tyrion Lannister, Jamf knows things too.

That’s why Trusted Access doesn’t only deliver comprehensive protections that protect your enterprise and the devices that connect to organizational resources. It also extends security protections across your infrastructure, delivering the same level of security to each and every device that connects to your organization regardless of which devices users utilize, where they’re located or what network connection they use anywhere in the world.

Devices aren’t just safe when using Trusted Access. Users and company data are too because Jamf:

• Designs product capabilities to integrate securely, operating together as a single platform
• Delivers an experience that while Apple-first, Apple-best, includes securing supported platforms like Microsoft and Android
• Protects organizational data anywhere it exists: on-premises, in the cloud or hybrid models
• Promotes productivity by ensuring that security and privacy are protected without impacting the end-user experience
• Remains compatible and reliable with every new OS update and security patch, supporting new features and protections with same-day support