Bridging the gap between IT and Security with Jamf and Microsoft AI

Benefits of Amazon EC2 Mac instances

Dave Siederer opens his session with the statement: “AWS does have a little bit of experience with compute-on-demand.” This stands in stark contrast to the fact that, as of this session, there are over 800 instance types currently available on Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

The principle idea behind EC2, according to Siederer, is to allow scaling up or down of compute needs. From processing to storage — the resources you need to make your application run as fast and efficiently as possible are available at your fingertips.

But what does this mean for EC2 Mac instances?

• Access and scale macOS on-demand in minutes
• Configure and deploy instances with snapshots and images
• Low latency and high bandwidth networking
• Configure for high availability and resiliency
• Secured connections from your Mac environment to AWS

Mac meets AWS Nitro System

Mac instances are powered by the AWS Nitro System, an add-on board that provides scalable technology, which controls:

• Storage
• Networking
• Physical Security

EC2 instances integrate Apple hardware with the AWS Nitro System, which includes the Nitro Security Chip (providing hardware root of trust) and the Nitro Card (providing Network I/O and monitoring capabilities). With this powerful pairing, Amazon enables “better application build performance and faster tests for macOS” with 10Gbps network throughput and 8Gbps Amazon EBS bandwidth.

Managing EC2 Mac fleets with Jamf

“Powerful Apple-native tools for security, administrators, and support.”

Thanks to its partnership with Amazon, Jamf is able to provide connectivity, security and visibility to EC2 Mac fleets, explains Siederer. For a granular look at what this means, let’s drill down on each category further.

Connectivity

Enroll, connect and secure EC2 Macs using Jamf Pro API.

Security

Manage fleets with existing tools and MDM profiles.

Visibility

Ensure compliance and consistency of Apple fleets.

Generative AI at AWS

“Building new apps in new ways.”

Speaking about generative AI and how Amazon plans to utilize it to allow developers to build applications in novel ways, Siederer introduced Amazon Bedrock. Siederer discussed some of the key points built into Amazon Bedrock that will enable users to develop software utilizing AI at the forefront of innovation. These are:

• Choice of leading foundation models through a single API
• Model customization
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Agents that execute multistep tasks
• Security, privacy and safety