Jamf + HiddenApp: Ultimate Apple fleet security

Even before the global pandemic, the adoption of remote and hybrid working, BYOD (bring your own device) programs and online learning was expanding steadily within enterprise organizations, businesses, healthcare and education. When the pandemic hit, the challenges of fleet management increased in scale and complexity. Here, I share how HiddenApp’s technology has responded and risen to these challenges, to enable our customers to strengthen the security of their mobile device fleets.

If you’re managing a dispersed fleet of mixed devices, you likely know how difficult it can be to keep on top of the shifting endpoint ecosystem while feeling confident that your devices are secure, not to mention compliant with data security regulations.

HiddenApp was specifically built to track, monitor and recover remote devices by way of a single centralized, user-friendly dashboard.

It was developed not just to give people with IT responsibilities more time and headspace to take on more strategic challenges, but to also reduce the risk and associated costs of device loss.

Protecting devices against loss

When a device is missing, the consequences go beyond the cost of a replacement. There’s the operational cost: the interruption of business operations, messed-up workflows and additional tasks such as going through all the reporting procedures. There’s the cost of potentially leaked or lost data, plus the cost of fines by regulatory bodies. There’s an environmental cost — the more often you need to replace your fleet, the bigger your carbon footprint. And, of course, there’s also a reputational cost: You don’t want to suddenly become a headline, losing your data or that of your clients with the consequential loss of customer trust and market share.

According to a report by Kensington, one in ten laptops are likely to be lost or stolen from an organization over the lifetime of each device. PWC found that cybercrime and asset misappropriation were two of the top three frauds facing U.S. businesses in 2020, contributing to a financial impact of $43 billion over 24 months. COVID-19 has only increased the risk to data security, with more employees working remotely.

“When it comes to preventing and tackling fraud, our research shows that a dollar invested now is worth twice as much when a fraud hits.”

Kristin Rivera, PwC Global Forensics Leader

HiddenApp was designed to give organizations the tools to quickly detect incidents of lost, misplaced or stolen devices, and a range of effective investigating tools to:

• Increase the chance of retrieving missing devices
• Lock down and protect sensitive data
• Gather solid evidence for law enforcement or insurance requirements

HiddenApp has a toolbox of customizable features that allow you to:

Prevent device loss

HiddenApp’s proactive prevention and detection functionality is an early warning system that improves the chances of detecting and recovering missing devices. This early warning system includes a geofencing capability, which detects and reports when a device physically leaves an authorized location, along with IP whitelisting, which detects and reports when a device is connected to an unauthorized network.

Identify unauthorized users

If you believe the device has been misplaced permanently, or possibly stolen, simply set the device to "missing" on your HiddenApp dashboard. HiddenApp will get to work beaming in tracking data, as well as taking secret screenshots of what’s happening on-screen and iSight photos to capture the unauthorized user on camera, creating an audit trail that’s perfect for creating a strong evidence base.

Of course, HiddenApp takes privacy seriously and has flexible privacy settings fitted as standard. This means that the tracking and investigative settings – location, network, photos, screenshots and keylogging – can each be enabled or disabled individually. Data gathered as a result of tracking can be permanently deleted, too.

Track down missing devices with pinpoint accuracy

HiddenApp’s ultra-accurate location tracking shows you the device’s real-time location on Google Maps. You can even track it to a physical address, as HiddenApp will discover and report the name of the network your device is connected to, and its proximity to the router.

Send audio and written messages to devices

HiddenApp’s messaging feature has a variety of applications, especially those that can lead to faster recovery of a device. Messages are totally customizable and have been used to give the finder of the device the owner’s contact details and, if appropriate, the tempting information that there’s a reward for its recovery.

HiddenApp’s messaging function is a useful communications tool for sending out important notifications or emergency messages and has been especially useful to schools and colleges, which have used it to flag up reminders to students to return their devices at the end of a school year or lease period, or when they have changed school district. There’s also an option to send out bulk messages to the whole fleet, or just to particular groups.

"Jamf has been a game-changer for us to effectively manage our fleet of Apple devices, but the addition of HiddenApp has taken it to another level. We no longer need to worry about a laptop going missing or being stolen as HiddenApp provides all of the necessary investigation tools to track it down with incredible accuracy.”

Collin Yaindl, System Network Administrator, Southern Lehigh School District

Supporting compliance

Depending on the market and location in which you operate, you’ll no doubt need to demonstrate compliance with a variety of data security and IT frameworks. These can be at state or federal levels, such as COPPA or the CCPA in California and GDPR in Europe, or sector-based like HIPAA, PCi and FINRA.

If you’re looking to win enterprise-level contracts, you might be looking to prove your credibility and trustworthiness with voluntary compliance accreditations such as ISO 27001 or SOC2.

HiddenApp’s functionality can be an integral part of a robust information security management system (ISMS), which you’ll need in order to demonstrate compliance with a range of regulatory or voluntary requirements.

As well as keeping devices secure from theft and loss, HiddenApp helps to enforce corporate device-use policies like:

• Location-based security policies, allowing operation in authorized zones only
• IP-based security policies, allowing connection to authorized networks only

Its automated activity logging, reporting and device visibility provide a perfect audit trail to keep auditors happy.

Seamlessly integrate with Jamf

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve built out an integration with Jamf, so using the two together has never been easier.

Once you’ve integrated Jamf and HiddenApp, you can import devices directly from Jamf. Auto-enrollment between Jamf and HiddenApp makes things even simpler. As you add devices to your fleet within your Jamf instance, they’ll automatically be enrolled into your HiddenApp account.

We’ve streamlined workflows even further with the addition of Auto-deployment, which creates a policy in Jamf to deploy the HiddenApp package to all enrolled devices programmatically.

In summary, we’re delighted to be working alongside Jamf, the global leader in Apple mobile device management. This partnership gives us the opportunity to better help their customers protect their mobile device fleets. At the same time, we’re looking forward to delivering an even more streamlined experience to our clients.