Mac in the Enterprise: 4 Security Trends Shaping IT in 2025

Introduction

Mac’s growing adoption in the enterprise is no secret. The number of users and organizations purchasing and using Apple computers for work speaks to its versatility as a powerful computing device that supports business objectives as efficiently as it handles personal computing needs. This level of flexibility is one of the key drivers of the continued success of Mac in global industries.

Another key differentiator is Apple’s commitment to upholding security and user privacy – regardless of ownership model. With the best out-of-box security, the Mac is poised to safeguard devices, users, and data from a number of common threats, like known malware (XProtect), executing unverified code (Gatekeeper), and software security vulnerabilities (Rapid Security Responses).

However, just as technology evolves at a rapid pace, threat actors have adopted this stance as well by converging threats, evolving their toolsets and tactics to increasingly target macOS through innovative vectors, like:

• Developing sophisticated AI-driven malware
• Obtaining and compromising credentials through phishing campaigns
• Exploiting misconfigurations throughout the supply chain
• Taking advantage of implicit trust models to pivot attacks

Advanced threats and attacks call for robust, comprehensive security strategies that protect assets and stakeholders at multiple levels. By layering protections and extending them holistically across your infrastructure, enterprises are better able to:

• Achieve a balance between security and privacy
• Provision devices with secure configurations
• Maintain Mac and PC security baselines with parity 
• Identify and prevent sophisticated threats
• Enforce compliance regardless of ownership model

In short, by implementing Apple-centric solutions, businesses can rest assured that the productivity benefits of Mac in the enterprise are not impacted by evolving threats while native protections are fortified to keep confidential data safeguarded and devices compliant. Achieving parity with other devices in heterogeneous networks while continuing support of business objectives.

That brings us to the core focus of this blog: we explore the impact of Macs in the enterprise and five trends affecting cybersecurity in 2025. But before diving in, turn your attention to a brief Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis to flesh out crucial points IT leadership needs to consider when developing cybersecurity strategies for organizations adopting the Mac platform. 

SWOT Analysis of Macs in the Enterprise

For those unfamiliar with a SWOT analysis, the organizational exercise aims to identify internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats of a given topic. Through analysis, strategic decision-making is quantified by data-driven results.

Strengths

• Increase employee productivity and satisfaction
• Lower TCO and increased ROI on deployed Macs
• Industry-leading security and user privacy functions
• Reduce administrative overhead through automation

Weaknesses

• Unmanaged Macs introduce compliance risks
• Non-compliant Macs equal gaps in overall security plans
• IT focus shifts from business process enhancements to help desk
• Inconsistent user experience impacts employee productivity 

Opportunities

• Achieve parity across supported platforms
• Streamline security strategies across infrastructure
• Optimize incident response and remediation workflows
• Integrate device, identity and security stacks

Threats

• Unmitigated vulnerabilities could lead to exploits
• Shadow IT (non-sanctioned services) place company data at risk
• Legal liabilities from industry compliance violations
• Downstream compromise from supply chain attacks 

Emerging Mac Security Trends in 2025

We’ve discussed the growth of Mac adoption in the enterprise and performed a SWOT analysis to identify key factors that affect strategic decision-making and impact the organizational security posture. 

In this section, we tie them together with the following five emerging security trends IT needs to consider minimizing the challenge of successfully managing and securing Mac in the enterprise in 2025.

1. Striking a balance between security and privacy

As mentioned previously, Apple bakes security and privacy into each of its products and services from the ground up. In doing so, not only does Mac provide great protection from known threats out of the box, but it also provides the perfect foundation to build upon so that enterprises can integrate additional functionality and extend features to augment protection against evolving threats.

One key to obtaining the protections necessary to combat sophisticated threats is harnessing the power of API.  Both Apple’s Endpoint Security API and the Jamf API grant IT flexibility and granular control by customizing protections based on strategies that are developed to best address the unique compliance needs of your enterprise. A benefit of integrating solutions via API, for example, is the development of advanced threat-hunting and remediation workflows that identify and mitigate unknown threats lurking undetected by traditional security controls.

It's important to recognize that “balance” doesn’t mean a “one size fits all” or single pane of glass solution, but rather securely integrating the tools your enterprise relies on to keep its device fleet safeguarded from threats. In short, it’s not redesigning your network for Mac but putting the solutions already being used, like Microsoft Entra ID (identity) or Splunk (reporting), together with a management and security solution that supports macOS natively, ensuring that Mac fits seamlessly within your network. Additionally, native support means those devices remain secure without compromising user privacy or vice versa, ensuring your users thrive with workflows that empower them to stay productive – maximizing ROI and driving TCO, like achieving a “70% reduction in the time spent on help desk tickets.”

2. Reducing the attack surface and enforcement

Regardless of whether your company is part of a regulated industry or aims to align business operations with organizational standards and needs, compliance, and the consequences of non-compliance, affect all enterprises. Last year, the Jamf Security 360: Annual Trends Report identified that “39% of organizations had at least one device with known vulnerabilities.” Not zero-day threats, but a known vulnerability with a patch available. IT pros and leaders known how critical patch management is to minimizing risk from exploiting vulnerabilities, well the same applies to establishing secure baselines by implementing security benchmarks that meet your company’s compliance needs.

Endpoints with default settings or misconfigurations pave the way for exploitation, which according to a Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report metric, shows a “68% year-over-year growth.” Coupled with threat actors increasingly targeting supply chains, it is table stakes for organizations to make certain their Mac fleet is not only configured properly during provisioning, but that compliance is maintained throughout the device’s lifecycle to minimize the risk of exposing devices to cybersecurity threats and the company to liability from non-compliance.

One method to align and maintain compliance is by using security baselines that are configured and deployed to managed endpoints. For Mac, the Jamf Compliance Editor (JCE), which is based on the macOS Security Compliance Project (mSCP), provides turn-key access to customize configurations based on compliance requirements, like HIPAA for medical industry devices. Once settings are configured to your enterprise needs, they are seamlessly uploaded to Jamf for Mac and deployed across your device fleet so devices are configured properly. As for maintaining compliance, active monitoring and policy-based workflows work in real-time to identify non-compliant endpoints, in turn triggering policies that execute workflows to bring affected endpoints back into compliance automatically, maintaining data security on company sanctioned and BYO devices alike.

3. Increasingly sophisticated threats and attacks

The modern threat landscape today looks vastly different from ten years ago. With the influx of technologies, most notably Artificial Intelligence (AI), the landscape of cybersecurity looks to shift faster and by greater degrees. In fact, LLMs are already capable of easily generating malicious code that is both complex and nuanced enough to bypass traditional signature-based detection engines. As GenAI learns more, results only stand to get better at producing malware samples, giving rise to polymorphic malware that “could lead to a staggering amount of slightly different samples with similar functionalities that will overwhelm researchers,”according to security researchers at Palo Alto Networks.

In fact, while credential-based attacks have overtaken phishing campaigns as the top threat according to Verizon, the shift from first to second place means stakeholders still have their work cut out for them in identifying these threats. As it relates to AI, the accuracy of generating spear phishing emails has not only exceeded a 50% success rate, but equally worrisome – “AI-automated attacks performed on par with human experts” in a recent study Evaluating Large Language Models’ Capability to Launch Fully Automated Spear Phishing Campaigns: Validated on Human Subjects.

Cybersecurity is quickly approaching a point where the window of opportunity between the time it takes IT and Security teams to gather and analyze, and make data-driven decisions is rapidly shrinking. Coupled with the threat advancements mentioned prior, the only way for enterprises to match strength is with strength, namely implementing AI and Machine Learning (ML) technologies within their security stack to identify, defend and reduce risk from sophisticated AI-based threats to scale. When deployed as part of a defense in depth strategy, AI-augmented protections leverage large data sets of threat intelligence to detect AI-generated threats based on behavioral analytics, providing IT with recommendations on how to best respond to incidents and data-driven decision-making.

4. Achieving security parity in cross-platform networks

Modern networks are made up of numerous devices across multiple platforms and ownership models. The number of truly homogeneous networks (i.e., those that support one platform, like only macOS) pales in comparison to heterogeneous networks, or those consisting of a mix of macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. From an IT standpoint, managing only one platform or OS type is preferable, the reality is that to be successful, IT and Security teams must shift from OS-based management and security to one that focuses on securing company resources and maintaining compliance across their infrastructure. 

A challenge to securing various platforms is achieving parity. That is, ensuring that workflows maintain and enforce the same level of security regardless of which OS a stakeholder is using for work or whether they or the company owns the device being used. After all, a single network designed to use conditional access policies for Windows devices but not Mac leaves corporate resources open to risk from compromised devices/credentials or unable to access resources altogether, impacting user productivity, with neither scenario being particularly desirable.

IT leaders shouldn’t have to compromise. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) extends zero trust architecture across the entire network, achieving parity by minimizing complexity across multiple platforms, standardizing security policies to reduce risk and maintain compliance across the enterprise by enforcing requirements. ZTNA is based on the Zero Trust model, providing real-time monitoring of device and credential health telemetry to assess endpoint risk. When a health check is verified to be within your customized accepted risk tolerances, access to the requested resource is approved; when it cannot be verified (or doesn’t meet baseline security requirements), access remains blocked and the telemetry data is shared securely with integrated solutions, triggering workflows to remediate the issue(s) detected, continuing to perform verifications until endpoint and credential checks are verified and access is granted.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity is headed toward a paradigm shift. The combination of advanced technologies, changes in the way that company’s and employees do business and ever-evolving threat landscape pose both new challenges to security and introduce novel ways with which to secure enterprise resources.

Security trends like the ones discussed here clue IT leaders into what the direction the industry is moving toward. Additionally, they provide insight that ties directly into key strategic decisions to proactively develop and implement strategies to ensure operational efficiency while maintaining the efficacy of security controls within their enterprise.

Actionable Insights for IT Leaders

• Develop and implement a comprehensive, defense in depth security strategy based on Zero Trust and conditional access policies to keep endpoints secured with parity
• Augment threat detection, prevention and remediation workflows with AI-based tools to mitigate growing sophisticated security risks before they escalate
• Integrate management, identity and security solutions to unlock advanced functions and enhanced controls to streamline cross-platform support
• Align regulatory requirements and company standards with company needs, establishing a secure baseline for endpoints and to enforce compliance 
• Foster collaboration between IT and Security teams, creating integrated defense and remediation strategies to balance overall security, productivity and stakeholder experiences