Security in small business with Jamf Now

As a small business owner, you have to wear many hats: manager, CEO, accountant, marketer, front-desk worker—the list goes on. And yet there’s one more hat to don: security specialist.

As complicated as the security world is, keeping the growing business you worked hard to build safe and secure doesn’t have to be. Jamf Now can help the smallest teams manage work devices while helping to keep them secure.

Does my small business need security?

Short answer: definitely! Cybersecurity threats are not just for large companies—in fact in 2021, according to StrongDM, 46% of all cyber breaches affected businesses with less than 1000 employees. And 61% of small businesses were targets for a cyber attack; that’s more than 3 in 5 businesses!

Cyber attacks come with a price. Businesses can lose valuable customers and opportunities as their technology is disabled while recovering from an attack. Intellectual property, customer information and company data can be stolen. Companies can take financial hits upwards of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to mention that if appropriate action isn’t taken after an attack, they can happen again and again.

But maybe you’ve already looked into security measures to protect your investments. And indeed, most small businesses have implemented firewalls, antivirus protection and backups. Certainly, these practices are good to have. But are they enough?

Building a cybersecurity strategy

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) puts out what many consider the “gold standard” for cybersecurity frameworks. This framework breaks down a cybersecurity strategy into these parts: identify, protect, detect, respond and recover. Let’s briefly dive into these pillars and examine how Jamf Now can help your small business.

Identify

To defend your company data, it’s critical to identify:

• Who has access to your business information
• What devices and apps are connected to your resources
• Who is accessing your information at a given time

Jamf Now helps you keep a device inventory of all company-owned devices, and gives you insight about device settings and their security status. Shared devices running iOS or iPadOS can even be locked into Single App Mode, preventing any devices from being used for purposes other than for work. For Macs, the Self Service and app deployment features allow you to allocate company-approved apps, reducing the risk of employees downloading unapproved software and other shadow IT practices.

Another feature of Jamf Now that helps enable security is Password Sync for macOS. This feature for Azure AD and Okta keeps accounts that access your company resources secure by requiring multi-factor authentication and strict identity verification—in other words, it keeps your information in the right hands while keeping track of who is granted access.

Protect

One of the simplest and effective ways to keep your devices secure is to stay on top of software updates. These updates don’t just include the latest software innovations; they can also include critical updates to address vulnerabilities that can compromise your security posture. Jamf Now can deploy updates to any or all of your devices.

Beyond updates, Jamf Now can:

• Configure Wi-Fi, email, calendar and contacts so there’s no guessing accounts are set up correctly
• Encrypt device data
• Ensure passcodes and passwords meet security requirements
• Remotely lock, unlock and wipe devices in case they get lost or stolen

Detect

Even organizations with large security teams can fall victim to a cyber attack. When prevention falls short, reliable detection of threats mitigates or minimizes the impact. Jamf Now includes built-in malware prevention and detection software to identify threats. This software relies on expert research and third-party feeds about the latest malware.

Respond and recover

Jamf Now’s malware detection feature also quarantines any potential malware, allowing for appropriate action to be taken. This built-in functionality helps prevent malicious software and other threats from running on your Macs.

Getting started

Even though Jamf Now offers complex features, setting up your application doesn’t have to be complicated. Jamf Now offers quick setup and ease of use without requiring an IT team. You also start with built-in Blueprints to help you configure your systems right out of the box; you also have the flexibility to create custom Blueprints to meet your business needs.