Time and cost savings for office management, legal & data security and IT—with Jamf

Many thanks to Roy Verberne for contributing significantly to this blog series.

All organizations want to save time and money. Unsurprisingly, more and more businesses are implementing device management software tools to minimize the time staff spends on tasks by automating, simplifying and even eliminating them entirely.

But the benefits of an MDM solution are in no way limited to the IT department. In fact, all departments benefit with time and cost savings using Jamf solutions.

This is the third in a three-part series outlining how MDM with Jamf provides solutions can save time and improve workflows for every department in your organization.

• Read "Time and cost savings for Marketing, Finance, and Sales," the second in our three-part series,
• You can read the first in our three-part series: "Time and cost savings for HR departments".

Office management

Guest sign-in

• Using an iPad in the Kiosk Mode with the Jamf Setup and Reset applications, guests can sign in and out by themselves. This is not only practical, but also fulfils security policies such as fire regulations requiring offices to show how many people are in the building at a given time.

Displaying information

• Show important information or event details on Apple TVs and iPads around the office. This is particularly convenient for displaying the availability of meeting and conference rooms.

Office moves

• Using live inventory data, office management can track the number of devices and who they belong to.

Providing new employees with hardware

• An employee’s first day should not be spent setting up their devices and downloading apps. With pre-configured devices sent to office management, new employees can hit the ground running. Additionally, Jamf Connect can help IT administrators further streamline zero-touch deployment, when using a cloud-identity provider like Okta or Microsoft Azure Active Directory, with account provisioning to give end users the exact apps and resources they need to be productive, all accessed with a single identity.

Printers

• Pre-configured printer settings mean that office management staff are not longer required for manual set up. (Speaking of printers, it is easy to save money on printing using the Jamf integration with Papercut: monitoring print jobs, limiting users and user groups by budget, securing confidential documents and much more.

Legal & data security

Enforce security policies

• Employees should read and agree that they accept company policies and other legal documents on their first day at work. Such legal documents can be pushed to a new employee’s device where the end user can sign it digitally. Jamf Pro will then detect whether the document has been opened. Similarly, security policies for devices can be set to be automatically enforced by Policies and Restrictions in Jamf Pro. These can even be made dynamic using Smart Groups and scoping. Jamf Protect can then ensure that these defined security policies are maintained or quickly remedied. Jamf Connect can ensure IT is able to maintain security and compliance standards across all devices by enforcing password policies via the cloud-identity provider permissions, adding an extra layer of security.

Equipment tracking

• In the case of a possible breach, the legal department can use Jamf Pro to quickly detect which device has engaged in potentially illegal activities. Using advanced search functions, admins can set up regular reports being sent via email to Compliance, informing the department of inventory updates and device information.

Data protection

• Because Jamf Connect requires a cloud-identity username and password, IT administrators are able to monitor what devices are being accessed, from where and by whom. This is a powerful security measure to keep remote employees protected as they may be logging into their device from an unsecured network.
• When a device is lost or stolen, staff can remotely lock and wipe the device. This way, personal employee information and data is not at risk of getting into the wrong hands.
• To limit the accidental exfiltration of data, lock down the use of external media, such as USB drives, and airdrop.

Compliance

• Pre-made scripts in Jamf Pro can ensure compliance with company rules or national laws. Compliance settings can be preconfigured to prevent possible fines. In case end users do not meet compliance regulations, Jamf Pro identifies these users using Smart Groups— and the admin can push a customised email providing them with the needed update or fix.

Centre for Internet Security (CIS) Compliance

• Ensure your Macs meet CIS benchmark standards using scripts provided by Jamf, available from GitHub. These meet a range of internet security requirements, such as enabling Firewall and FileVault as well as auto updates, requirements for passcodes and disabling automatic login.

Reducing the risk of a security breach

• Consistent deployment of baseline security policies across all devices means there is a smaller risk of a costly and time-intensive recovery from a security breach. Monitor these settings to ensure that devices do not drift from the baseline using Jamf Protect.
• Consider using Duo, a popular 2-factor authentication tool enabling security of accounts, available from Jamf Marketplace.
• Monitor for malicious activity on your devices with Jamf Protect to ensure malware, adware, phishing and other attacks can be remediated quickly.

IT

Last but not least, Jamf solutions deliver the largest time and cost savings to the IT department. Our blog series outlining how ROI is delivered in three main ways dive into a study by Hobson & Company. The study consisted of 15 in-depth interviews with Jamf Pro customers to determine if and where organizations leveraging Jamf could save time, resources and money.

Our customers identified three main areas to drive ROI:

The report showed admins greatly benefited from simplified IT management, saving time and money on provisioning devices, managing apps and eliminating the need for help desk tickets. Admins also reported an improved end-user experience, meaning users were not limited in their productivity due to unresolved technical problems. They did higher quality work more quickly with the natural workflow Jamf solutions offered. Lastly, admins benefited from mitigated risk with Jamf Pro functionalities such as automated security and policy management, automated and real-time IT inventory reports as well as a range of security features that help avoid the risk of security breach.

Want all the details? Download our ROI report.

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The benefits for IT are in no way limited to the mentioned features in the ROI report and new features and functionalities are continuously added as we develop the Jamf product portfolio. Some of the most popular management functionalities and security benefits can be divided into basic and advanced features. Here are some of our favorites at Jamf:

Basic Features

Some of the basic features most organizations benefit from are remotely pushing and managing apps, patch management, Zero Touch Deployment, enabling FileVault, pre-configuring Wi-Fi and controlling printer settings— as well as enforcing OS updates remotely. These go hand-in-hand with the native Apple ecosystem Jamf operates on. Even simply the basic functionalities in combination with Apple’s hardware greatly reduces effort for their administration.

Advanced Features

• ServiceNow and Jamf Self Service create a central place for your users to create IT tickets, install software, update configurations and troubleshoot common issues.

• Licensed software with license keys means Jamf Pro searches how many computers have a particular version of a software and deducts the total number from the overall license count. That means not only accurate live licence data but also accurate predictions of license renewals in the future.

• Password Sync keeps the Mac username and password in sync with cloud-identity-provider credentials, using a single identity for all apps the user needs to be productive.

• Hardware health should be at the heart of every IT department. Accurately track hardware health, whether end users are using a device model affected by an issue, uptime, battery status and last check-in. Does any of it look below standard? Admins can create basic troubleshooting maintenance in Self Service, using functions such as permissions fixes and flushing caches. Want to prevent future hardware health issues? Prevent users from installing outdated OS versions by removing them from the Self Service catalog.

Still not sure how these apply to your daily business operations or how to use these points to build a business case for Jamf Pro at your organization?

Contact us and we can discuss your organization’s Apple ecosystem and expected ROI with Jamf. We'd love to help your organization succeed with Apple!