Jamf After Dark: Is good enough, good enough?

A strong cybersecurity management strategy is difficult to set up. It requires assessing your organization’s needs, finding appropriate vendors, keeping up with the latest threats and on and on. That’s why some IT and Security teams find themselves with “good enough” solutions that may (mostly) get the job done but:

• Aren’t very efficient
• Don’t take advantage of a product’s full feature set
• Are inconvenient for users

In this episode, Garbis, Rabbitt, Ransom and Randall explore some examples of this “good enough” attitude and how it ultimately hinders cybersecurity and productivity.

Examples of “good enough” configurations

• Ransom recalls working with an organization that signed on with the same Apple ID on all of their devices to manage their FileVault keys.
• Rabbitt worked with a large casino that gave iPod Touches to their housekeeping staff. IT was taking home dozens of iPods home per night and setting them up with their personal email address and Apple ID to download the necessary apps housekeepers needed to perform their work.
• Randall collaborated with a customer that was creating Apple IDs on new devices when an employee needed an app installed. Randall helped them streamline this process by encouraging them to use the Apple Volume Purchase Program.

These suboptimal workflows may get the job done, but they certainly aren’t the best way to do it. Garbis points out that this could be due to ignorance, where admins simply don’t know a better way because they’re working outside their expertise. And as Randall mentions, once admins have been doing something the same way for years — even if it’s inefficient — they are going to resist change.

Going beyond “good enough”

The group works with customers to move past this “good enough” mentality by creating workflows and offering solutions that simplify work. For example:

1. Ransom worked with an organization that was exploring software solutions by looking at a checkbox list of features.
2. They wanted a solution that detected lateral movement, which, according to their checkboxes, their current solution did.
3. After Ransom dug deeper into this feature, he realized that their current solution did this by monitoring Active Directory (AD).
4. However, the customer didn’t bind their devices to AD, so Ransom directed them to a better solution that met their needs.

This is one example of the ways working with Jamf helps customers move beyond their “good enough” solutions that seem to meet requirements but don’t actually meet standards. Garbis and Randall give more examples about how Jamf can fulfill customer requirements where other solutions fall short; listen to the episode for more details on migrations and improving password management.

Garbis points out that “good enough” solutions and getting to a more ideal setup both require work, so ultimately, you have to choose your work. The difference is, from a security standpoint, if you make the experience simpler for the user and find solutions that complement your software stack, you’re more likely to be successful.