Purposeful Deployment: Securing Education with Jamf

Introduction

Educational institutions face a number of challenges when it comes to the management and security of their computing devices. While these issues come part and parcel with technology overall, issues relating to budget limitations and regulatory compliance – paired with an overburdened workforce and financial incentives based on student performance – add layers of complexity.

This makes challenges unique to the IT education sector difficult to solve but not impossible. Requiring a nuanced approach, the keys to success in managing devices in Edu require purposeful deployment. If you’re not sure what purposeful deployment is, take a moment to consider the following words as the traits of a successful IT deployment that’s part of your institution’s overarching management and security strategy:

• Intent: Identify your end goal, recognizing that deployment is not a destination but a crucial part of the journey toward it.
• Thoughtful: Consider the needs, wants and “nice to haves” of various stakeholders that facilitate reaching teaching and learning objectives.
• Simplify: Increase efficiency by focusing on the similarities (not their differences) to refine workflows and automate where possible.
• Holistic: Extend your vision across all aspects of your infrastructure for a truly unified and comprehensive IT strategy.

Solving challenges impacting Edu with IT and Security

In this section, we take a closer look at some of the challenges unique to the Education sector, as well as provide insightful guidance on solutions that help schools:

• Mitigate IT and Security-related risks
• Uphold teaching and learning initiatives
• Support school and district objectives

Protect users and data online and offline

Just like technology across other sectors, computers, mobile devices and their users are targeted by threat actors employing myriad sophisticated threat types. We’re all familiar with malware and phishing campaigns, but what I’d like to draw your attention to is that Education ranks sixth based on the number of security incidents that occurred, according to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report. However, in that same report, the Edu sector ranks as the top victim of data breaches among the twenty-one industries listed.

In short, the data shows that threat actors experience the greatest success rates compromising Edu devices compared to any sector despite significantly more attempts made against other industries.

Thankfully, there are several strategies that IT/Security teams can weave into their management and security stacks to implement defense in depth. By layering protections and secure workflows to mitigate varied risks, setting a secure foundation during deployment, devices and data remain safe from the moment a device is first powered on without affecting how students or educators learn and teach.

• Provision devices ready to use with secure configurations and services pre-installed.
• Integrate on-device and in-network threat defense, creating a baseline of protection to prevent malware.
• Ensure students always remain safe online from inappropriate content and phishing URLs.

Keep devices and apps up to date

Just behind password management assistance, support tickets typically request IT’s help installing or updating an app necessary for stakeholders to do what they’re tasked with. Whether their role is student, educator or faculty member, the time between when the request is made and the issue resolved results in loss of opportunity for all stakeholders – including IT that must turn their attention from innovating better, more efficient workflows to performing an unskilled task.

Patch management, however, is table stakes to any security plan and as such, great care must be taken to preserve system, app and data integrity by mitigating risk stemming from the unpatched vulnerabilities present in out-of-date software. Should IT prioritize performing one task over the other? Yes, but in a way that allows both to be addressed without compromising the other. If it sounds too good to be true, well, it’s not…it merely comes down to leveraging technology to work for IT in much the same manner as educators leverage technology to help maximize how they reach their students. Here are some examples of how to mitigate risk and optimize processes while minimizing administrative overhead.

• Simplify deploying operating systems and security updates with visibility to track the status of rollouts.
• Automatically keep apps current and secure, operating systems, security updates and first- and third-party applications alike.

Comply with school standards and agency regulations

Educational institutions globally are mandated to protect student data and privacy information based on a series of criteria that may vary from one region to the next. While it’s beyond the scope of this article to articulate the requirements specific to your school or district, whether it’s governed by FERPA (US) or a provision of UK GDPR – regardless of the state or region – the end result is the same: schools must take great care to comply with mandatory regulations.

Compliance is a multi-faceted process that spans multiple levels and depending on the factors, some compliance management protocols may or may not extend to others. For example, restricting access to digital records is typically managed via technical controls; however, maintaining compliance with physical record-keeping can only be enforced through administrative controls. Speaking to the former, several aspects of compliance maintenance are made possible by integrating solutions: one to set the foundation while the other enforces it.

• Select a compliance framework, create a baseline and deploy it across your fleet, setting the foundation for device management.
• Actively monitor device health, comparing with security benchmarks to automatically remediate non-compliant endpoints with policy-based enforcement.
• Centrally manage access permissions to protected educational resources and gain visibility through secure integration with cloud Identity Providers (IdP).

Conclusion

The mark of a successful IT deployment in education goes beyond merely placing a Mac or an iPad in the hands of learners. Embedded within is a holistic strategy that blends security, efficiency and compliance while prioritizing robust content, differentiated learning and institutional outcomes to create a secure and seamless digital learning environment. Strategic IT solutions not only safeguard data but also streamline pedagogical operations, empowering educators and students alike, ensuring that technology enhances learning rather than diminishes it.

3 takeaways of transforming education with purposeful deployment

1. Strengthen security and risk mitigation

Layered security strategies are essential to defend against educational cyber threats. Secure device provisioning, on-device defenses and online safety controls protect student, educator and faculty data the moment the device is powered on.

2. Optimize IT efficiency with automation

Automated patch management and software updates reduce IT workloads, keep devices secure and minimize disruptions to the learning environment. This allows IT teams to focus on innovation rather than routine maintenance.

3. Ensure compliance with integrated solutions

Schools meet stringent data and/or privacy regulations by implementing compliance frameworks, integrating identity management systems and automating policy enforcement. Doing so streamlines IT operations while upholding data security and user privacy.