How Automation Simplifies Mac Management

What does automation mean?

The concept of automation in IT is mercurial, meaning one thing to IT professionals and something different to IT leadership. To set expectations about this blog, we take a moment to define what automation means to each group before explaining why both takes are equally important to the efficacy of your management and security strategy.

For both, automation can be distilled down to the following phrase: to do more with less. But exactly how automation helps to achieve this varies between groups.

IT Professionals

The chief benefit of automation lies in reducing the number of repetitive actions required of day-to-day management and security functions. Automating redundant tasks allows IT pros to instead focus their expertise to:

• Deliver stellar support to end users
• Develop productivity-boosting workflows
• Enhance stakeholder experiences

IT Leadership

The primary benefit of introducing automation is for IT functions to achieve a greater level of support for business operations. Automating IT processes allows leadership to effectively measure key performance indicators, such as:

• Increasing productivity with streamlined workflows
• Enforcing compliance through security baselines
• Reducing resource misallocation by boosting efficiency
• Scaling management without increased admin overhead
• Maximizing ROI through alignment with strategic initiatives

5 Key Areas Where Automation Transforms Mac Management

Regardless of your industry, automation is a critical component of your management strategy. The growing number of devices used in the enterprise speaks to its continued reliance as a business productivity tool. This means that IT pros who haven’t yet embraced automation are not only missing out on opportunities to “work smarter – not harder” but IT leaders are strongly urged to consider the significant business impacts on both performance and security of continuing to manage IT operations through manual processes.

In this section, we present five key areas where automation transforms Mac management, mixing real-world scenarios and features to demonstrate automation success in enterprise environments.

1. Onboarding and Deployment

Deploying devices, including enrollment, provisioning and configuring them for the end user is a core function of management. Manual processes, especially as device counts grow into thousands of devices become exceedingly difficult to consistently maintain at scale.

Implementing a Zero-Touch deployment strategy leverages automation in the form of pre-enrollment profiles tagged to devices shipped from Apple, ensuring that they begin the provisioning process exactly as IT has mapped out. From the initial power on, the managed setup process is presented to the end user, shifting the burden from IT and empowering end users to proceed through curated device setup windows that install business apps, apply secure configurations and integrate critical services, such as cloud-based identities, seamlessly onboarding devices so that users don’t have to wait for IT to address their help desk request – automated workflows get employees onboarded quickly, meaning they have everything necessary to be productive sooner.

2. Ongoing Maintenance

Apart from service tickets, patch management is arguably the single task that occupies the majority of an IT team’s valuable time. OS patches and app updates aren’t just critical for endpoint security but play a crucial role in compliance as well.

Considering the average macOS system update takes approximately fifteen minutes to install, extrapolating the time impact on IT and productivity, one update multiplied by a thousand Macs equals 15,000 minutes (250 hours) of manual intervention by IT and the same amount of downtime employees experience during the install of said update.

Now imagine automating installs and updates of macOS system updates, security patches, and first- and third-party applications, alleviating this workload from IT’s extensive “to-do” list. What could IT and end-users do with all the time saved by ensuring that software remains up to date and enforced by policies?

3. Mac Endpoint Security

Keeping data secure, preventing malware and protecting users are three pivotal use cases that all stem from endpoint security. With the evolving threat landscape and growing sophistication of threat actors, Security teams must respond to myriad threats and analyze large data sets of threat intelligence all while keeping their heads on a swivel in the hopes of catching threats before they lead to a data breach.

A noted lack of security personnel and potential gaps in protection are what threat actors are banking on to find a way into corporate networks, making cybersecurity workflows particularly well-suited for supercharging via automation. Consider the three-pronged approach aided by Machine Learning (ML), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and automation.

• ZTNA verifies device and credential health via policy enforcement before access to protected resources is approved while keeping network connections always secured.
• ML obtains and analyzes threat intelligence to aid threat hunting and makes suggestions about best practices for maintaining a strong security posture.
• Automation ensures that known threats are prevented, and vulnerabilities mitigated, and unknown threats are identified, providing Security teams with insight into threat vectors.

4. Extending Support

Each key area we’ve discussed thus far is part of the holistic support Jamf for Mac delivers to enterprises. While the features and functionality presented are designed to support macOS natively, each organization is different and may have unique solutions in place to support their equally unique needs. This is why integration with third-party solutions is so important, because existing solutions, such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta or Splunk represent valuable tools that integrate with and extend support of our solution.

Not just that, but by securely integrating solutions, advanced functionality is enabled, developing feature-rich automated workflows used in the advanced management and security of your device fleet. A few examples of this are:

• Enforce device compliance using conditional access policies, extending the Zero Trust model across Macs and PCs with parity.
• Provision SSO access to protected business apps using identity management and requiring MFA verification.
• Gain valuable insight into Mac endpoint security by centrally gathering and analyzing rich telemetry data in your preferred SIEM solution.

5. Offboarding and Decommissioning

The Device Lifecycle doesn’t end, it just continues the loop when a new device is procured and the previous one is decommissioned. Keeping on top of decommissioned devices is a critical step of IT management requiring a 360-degree view of your assets. Not just devices, but apps licensed, users’ and organizational data must remain updated and secured as well.

Features like the Declarative Device Management (DDM) protocol for example ensure autonomously applied management settings and that changes are reported asynchronously resulting in the fastest, most reliable and current device information. A critical automation to leverage when sending remote management commands to devices in inventory from your mobile device management solution. When combined with dynamic features, like Smart Groups, automation-driven workflows streamline the offboarding process by restricting access to company resources, uninstalling business apps and facilitating secure erasure through remote wipe to ensure sensitive data is safely removed.

Conclusion

Automation empowers IT professionals and directors alike by delivering enhanced efficiency, device and data security, and scaling IT processes.

By reducing their reliance on manual, repetitive tasks, IT teams can apply their skills to developing innovative workflows and focus on delivering top-notch end-user support. Meanwhile, IT leaders gain strategic insights to aid data-driven decision-making to closely align IT processes with business operations through measurable business outcomes.

From streamlining management and security enforcement to extending Jamf for Mac with existing enterprise tooling, automation is a catalyst for operational excellence, maximizing performance and minimizing TCO. Organizations that embrace automation not only improve productivity and compliance but also optimize their IT infrastructure. As the enterprise landscape evolves, automation remains an essential component for buffing IT management and security strategies.

Key Takeaways

IT Professionals:

• Reduce Repetitive Tasks: Free IT from routine tasks to focus on innovation and prioritize support.
• Streamline Patch Management: Maintain a strong security posture, ensuring compliance and minimizing scheduled downtime.
• Enhance Endpoint Security: Verify endpoint health and mitigate risks through ZTNA conditional access policies and security baselines.
• Enable Seamless Integration: Unlock advanced workflows and functionality by leveraging compatibility with existing enterprise tools.
• Optimize Device Lifecycle Management: Maximize efficiency and performance while minimizing resource misuse at all levels of a device’s lifecycle.

IT Directors:

• Increase Productivity and Efficiency: Enhance overall IT efficiency through tighter alignment with and in support of business processes.
• Ensure Compliance and Security: Maintain data security and compliance with patch management and policy-based enforcement.
• Optimize Resource Allocation: Reduce administrative overhead, allowing IT teams to focus on developing strategic business initiatives.
• Scale IT Operations Effectively: Scale operations seamlessly, maintaining compliance without requiring additional IT staff.
• Maximize ROI on Mac: Aligning automation with business objectives improves cost efficiency and long-term IT strategy execution.