JNUC 2021 : construire pour les années à venir

2020 was a year like no other… until this year. At our previous Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC), we introduced you to new technology and workflows that united coworkers, classmates, patients, friends and family. Today, we understand that the lessons learned continue to shape the way we work, how we educate and the delivery of care – be it in person or remote. And that’s a good thing.

This was the underlying theme of today’s JNUC Keynote where Jamf and many special guests — including Google, Scrive and Red Canary — discussed new and innovative ways of connecting the right people and devices to work resources; protecting people, devices and organizations from threats; and empowering individuals with Apple devices.

All while doing this in an enterprise-secure, consumer-simple manner that still protects personal privacy. But, before the Keynote dove into features and workflows, we showcased the enhancements that keep the Apple IT community informed and connected, Jamf Nation.

Jamf Nation: tightest community in high technology

You may have noticed substantial changes to Jamf Nation over the past few months. Along with a fresh new look, Jamf Nation now hosts discussions for each product with hubs for industries and sub-communities that help you connect with regional members. As for feature requests, you’re now able to see what stage your feature request is in — visibility we know you’ve been asking for.

To make accessing everything even easier for Jamf customers, the same credentials for Jamf Nation also provide Single Sign-On (SSO) to your Jamf Account, meaning you are connected to all your resources, including full account summary, products subscribed to, access to world-renowned training courses, and of course, an enhanced means of interacting with technical support. When not accessing products with Jamf Account, you can visit the developer portal, which offers resources and documentation for building and expanding your Jamf solutions, plus leverage the growing Jamf Marketplace, including more than 250 integrations.

Secure connection through authentication and access

Following a celebration of the Jamf Nation community, we turned our attention to how users get started and productive with their devices. Today, more than 3,500 organizations use Jamf Connect to help people connect to over one million devices. This year, we raised the bar in both security and simplicity by adding passwordless multifactor authentication to your Mac from your iPhone. You know it as Jamf Unlock; a consumer-simple solution that improves enterprise security. All users need to do is look at their iPhone.

Once authenticated, it’s time for secure access. After all, authentication alone should not govern enterprise access. What if the user’s device is out of compliance, what if an incoming phishing threat has been detected? In these cases, access needs to be blocked within seconds. Access to enterprise resources must always be conditional. And when access is granted, the connection must be fast, simple and encrypted. Historically, secure mobile connection has been accomplished through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Today there is a better way. It’s called Zero Trust Network Access and it’s brought to you by the new Jamf Private Access*.

When users pick up their device and use an application, Jamf Private Access* instantly establishes a microtunnel where all communication with the servers is encrypted. Security is further enhanced with risk-aware access policies that prevent compromised users and devices from gaining or maintaining access to the specified application. And unlike most VPNs, your personal data doesn’t use these microtunnels. Jamf’s intelligent split tunneling ensures that business connections are secured while enabling non-business applications to route directly to the internet.

Jamf Private Access* is available for macOS, iOS and iPadOS… and Windows and Android devices. You read that right. Jamf Private Access* is not Apple only, but it is Apple best, especially when it comes to maintaining privacy.

*Jamf Private Access capabilities are included with Jamf Connect.

Coupled with iCloud+ Private Relay, released in Apple’s iOS 15 and macOS Monterey operating systems, Apple and Jamf have launched solutions that enable secure access to business applications and maintain personal privacies.

Better Together: Google + Jamf

In past JNUCs, you heard how Jamf has worked extensively with Microsoft to integrate with their Zero Trust Security Model, known as conditional access, but not every organization uses Microsoft. Parisa Tabriz, head of product, design and engineering for Google Chrome, was here to announce Jamf’s new partnership with Google.

Watch to learn about the exciting things Jamf and Google are doing together, and to get a full walkthrough on the GoogleBeyond Corp enterprise integration

We are thrilled that Google is taking on this important challenge with Jamf, and are excited to announce that the Google BeyondCorp Enterprise integration will be available later this year.

Protection through security and privacy

Our job is to align and anticipate Apple’s strategy so we can be ready to meet our customers’ needs. Since its launch less than two years ago, Jamf Protect has helped over 1,500 organizations secure their Mac fleet, showing us that people are turning to Jamf and an Apple-specific solution to better secure your entire Apple fleet. For those in heavily regulated organizations, you asked us for a compliance and auditing solution for macOS that does not rely on any cloud infrastructure. Compliance Reporter is the answer.

Compliance Reporter

Compliance Reporter integrates with your SIEM tools to display and report in easy-to-access and understand dashboards. As we continue to invest in these compliance capabilities, it is clear that Jamf Protect is the comprehensive purpose-built security solution.

Jamf Threat Defense*

But Mac isn’t the only Apple device you need us to secure. Where’s Jamf Protect for iOS? Allow us to introduce Jamf Threat Defense*. Jamf Threat Defense* features advanced machine learning to identify and prevent known and unknown threats, blocks zero-day exploits before devices are impacted, provides real-time insights so you can take action and safeguards online privacy on iOS and Android devices. And what’s more, this same level of protection is available today for macOS when you adopt Jamf Private Access*.

*As of February 2023, Jamf Threat Defense capabilities are included with Jamf Protect. Jamf Private Access capabilities are included with Jamf Connect.

But you can go a step further. With Jamf providing all of this high-quality data, many wanted assistance with understanding, interpreting and responding to potential security threats. For this reason, we are so excited to announce our partnership with Red Canary and Red Canary CEO Brian Beyer. Beyer and Jamf CEO, Dean Hager, chatted about what this exciting new offering means for organizations around the world.

Empowerment through device and app management

With new enhancements, features and partnerships to help users protect their organization and improve workflows, Jamf securely connects the right people to the enterprise resources they need — it’s about how we use these tools to empower users with the legendary Apple experience. This was the theme for the final chapter of the opening keynote.

Students and Teachers

At Jamf, we are proud to provide significant innovations that help schools offer a learning environment wherever students take their devices, not just the classroom. One such solution is the Jamf Assessment app which provides a simple method for remote proctoring of web-based assessments. We are excited to announce that we’ve extended this remote proctoring workflow to our Jamf Teacher app on Jamf School.

Additionally, we have extended the Jamf Teacher classroom management capabilities beyond iOS and iPadOS devices to include macOS, allowing teachers to manage a classroom across all school-issued Apple devices for the full Apple ecosystem. But technology without the right training leads to poor adoption and unused potential. This is why Jamf has released a brand-new training platform — Jamf Educator.

Jamf Educator bolsters our ongoing commitment to student success by providing teachers a custom-built platform to learn the basics of classroom management using Jamf and Apple technologies.

IT administrators

While simplifying the life of our IT administrators is our mission, making life easier for your users is our passion. This applies to any IT administrators using one or multiple products within the Jamf portfolio, which is why Jamf Now will soon include preview versions of core Jamf Protect and Jamf Connect capabilities.

For our Jamf Pro users, a redesign and enhancement of iOS Self Service is on the way, including a customizable landing page with curated categories that allow IT admins to display or hide content as desired, making navigation between categories and content seamless. Accessibility is also a focus by including Voiceover, Dynamic text controls and support for light and dark mode.

Talking about iOS enhancements, the Keynote highlighted Single Login for our iOS users. Single Login, which is available now, helps users with shared iOS devices have a seamless Apple experience, similar to what they have on their personally owned device — all while enhancing management, security and device transitions in the process.

Lastly, to provide the best possible experience for administrators and end users, Jamf has created a third-party, screen-sharing framework and partnered with TeamViewer to integrate their platform to Jamf Pro. The combination of Jamf Pro and TeamViewer allows administrators to choose the remote monitoring tool of their choice, and use it directly within Jamf Pro.

App lifecyle management

Apps continue to be the fabric of the end user experience; they intersect every step of the user’s journey. And, with the advent of the M1 Mac, Apple opened an entirely new path for customers to experience volume app content which is why Jamf Pro added the ability support iOS App Store apps in the Mac App Store catalog, allowing IT admins to deploy supported iOS apps to M1-powered Mac devices.

At last year’s JNUC, Jamf supported 80 software titles. In just one year, we are now sourcing over 800 third-party application titles in Jamf’s App Catalog – far more than any other solution provider in the world. And with the recently released Title Editor, an admin can create and maintain their own software titles for use with Jamf patch management.

But we know, a lot of app lifecycle management lives within the maintaining and updating phase which is why many customers have asked for an improved patch workflow that mirrors the simplicity of the Mac App Store — introducing App Installers, coming later this year. With App Installers, many of the tedious tasks of sourcing, deploying and maintaining non-Mac App Store titles will be a thing of the past.

BYOD

We end on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs that have always been a great concept but often flawed in practice. Employees provide the hardware, organizations provide access, but all too often, devices are either over-managed or the employee is under-served.

The BYOD sweet spot is Apple User Enrollment provided with Jamf. User enrollment separates user data from work data and provides IT the right level of access to the device — but stops short of providing too much control. Couple this management with Jamf Self Service, and employees with user-enrolled devices can expect both personal privacy and enterprise access. To offer this, Jamf has embraced Apple’s new Service Discovery feature.

By using Apple’s Service Discovery, Jamf gives IT the ability to offer access to enterprise resources for BYOD users without having to touch the device or send an enrollment link while remaining secure. We know implementing BYOD in this manner is different than what you’ve done in the past, but Jamf believes user enrollment with Service Discovery, Jamf Self Service and Private Access* (now integrated with Jamf Connect) is the future of Apple BYOD. So, we want to give you an opportunity to try it out.

For the rest of 2021, Jamf will not charge a fee for any new BYO user-enrolled device in Jamf Pro. We want you to have the freedom to explore and experiment.

It was a jampacked keynote, filled with new features, upcoming releases and a glimpse at where Jamf and Apple are moving together to better your legendary Apple experience. There are plenty of sessions throughout JNUC to dive deep into everything covered here today, and JNUC sessions will be available for viewing even after this week. If you haven’t signed up, you still can and it's entirely free!

We hope you enjoy this week, and we all hope you learn and grow in every session you attend. We can still learn remotely, but fun is best had in person. So, next year, let’s plan on being together in San Diego!

Be on the lookout for registration information coming soon.