The Iru Blog

Iru Team

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5 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Leveraging MDM to Enable Remote Work

When more companies began letting their employees work from home a few years ago, device security and productivity became more important than ever for IT. Beyond just figuring out how to make sure remote team members could get their work done, admins needed to guard company data against the unique security risks posed by this new work environment.

Educational April 4, 2023

Iru Team

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6 min read

Device Management Solutions Explained: MDM vs EMM vs UEM

The IT world loves its three-letter acronyms. As part of that world, Apple device management is no different. If you deploy and manage fleets of Mac computers and iPhone or iPad devices for an organization, you’ve no doubt heard plenty of them. In particular, if you’ve spent any time researching ways to manage devices in your organization, you may have seen references to:

Educational March 31, 2023

Iru Team

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11 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Apple Business Manager

Apple Business Manager is a critical tool for anyone who manages Apple devices. It provides a critical link between your Apple device management solution and your devices, enabling things like Automated Device Enrollment (ADE). Add in its utility in distributing apps and other content at scale and other content and its ability to federate with user directories, and Apple Business Manager clearly becomes essential for any Mac admin.

Educational February 14, 2023

Iru Team

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7 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Managed Apple Accounts

Managed Apple Accounts are Apple Accounts (formerly Apple IDs) that your organization owns, controls, and assigns to users. Like any Apple Account, Managed Apple Accounts can be used to sign in to devices and services.

Educational February 10, 2023

Iru Team

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6 min read

Zero Trust Security: What Mac Admins Need to Know

Back in the day, organizational security was built around the idea of a firewall: The security system blocked access to resources within the organization from external bad actors. Originally, that paradigm was literal: You established a perimeter and kept people from outside the building from accessing the network—and the resources attached to it—inside.

Educational February 2, 2023

Iru Team

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5 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Managing FileVault

Securing sensitive company data is one of the top priorities for any IT department. For businesses that run on Apple, FileVault is an essential tool for Mac security. By encrypting all of the information on a Mac computer’s startup disk, FileVault makes company information unreadable to unauthorized users.

Educational January 31, 2023

Iru Team

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7 min read

Mac Malware Persistence: What It Is, How It's Achieved

When it comes to Mac malware, IT and security staff are well aware of the most common infection vectors: malicious emails or attachments, Trojanized applications, or attackers leveraging both known and unknown exploits. Apple consistently retools each version of its operating system to include better intrinsic defenses against such threats.

Educational January 6, 2023

Iru Team

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8 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Mercenary Spyware and Lockdown Mode

Although Apple designs security into its hardware, software, and services, Apple devices are not immune to malware and unwanted software installation. According to Malwarebytes’ 2022 Threat Review, the vast majority of malware detections on Apple platforms are—in most cases—fairly harmless; however, the growth of mercenary spyware places specific, targeted individuals within key industries at risk.

Educational September 30, 2022

Iru Team

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5 min read

Guide for Apple IT: Mac Patch Management

It’s one thing for a Mac admin to distribute apps to users. It’s another thing to make sure those apps stay up to date.

Educational March 25, 2022

Iru Team

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8 min read

Guide for Apple IT: App Deployment for macOS

Distributing and managing apps is one of a Mac admin’s core responsibilities. Apple makes this relatively easy for some apps, thanks to Apple Business Manager's Apps and Books feature. Unfortunately, not every business app an admin might want to make available to users is available that way. In this guide, we’ll provide an overview of how to distribute Mac software—with or without Apple Business Manager.

Educational March 17, 2022

Iru Team

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6 min read

Guide for Apple IT: macOS System and Kernel Extensions

Back in 2019, at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced some major changes to the way software developers would be able to interact with macOS. Specifically, the company said that kernel extensions (kexts) would be deprecated in favor of system extensions. That transition is still playing out, even now. Here’s what Mac admins should know about it and how they can use that knowledge to make life smoother for themselves and their users.

Educational January 7, 2022

Iru Team

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5 min read

Why IT Should Be Transparent with Users

Let’s be honest: Sometimes there’s a trust gap between IT and end-users. Admins may promulgate a policy without explaining the “why” behind it. Users may then try to circumvent or disregard that policy. And back and forth it goes, making life harder for both sides. Transparency in IT—telling users what you’re doing and why—is one way to bridge that gap. But how much should you, as an admin, tell your users about how you’re managing their devices? What’s the best way to communicate that to them?

Thought Leadership December 22, 2021

Iru Team

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7 min read

Lessons from 1,000 Migrations: How to Switch Device-Management Solutions

If you manage Apple devices, sooner or later you’ll consider the question: Should we switch from our current device-management solution to another? That question immediately leads to a host of others, and pretty soon the whole idea of migrating may begin to seem overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. With the right preparation and planning, switching from one device management solution to another is eminently doable, with big payoffs in efficiency and new capabilities at the end.

Educational December 3, 2021

Iru Team

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4 min read

Single Sign-on with SAML: How and Why to Set It Up

Weak and forgotten passwords have always been a sore spot for IT. Single sign-on (SSO) with SAML can ease that pain, by simplifying the login experience and enforcing secure authentication. In this article, we’ll provide an overview of how SSO and the SAML framework work together to keep users and administrators secure.

Educational November 19, 2021

Iru Team

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2 min read

Apple and the Hybrid Workplace: A Perfect Fit

By now, you’ve no doubt heard a lot about the “hybrid workplace”: After a year-plus when many employees worked entirely at home, many are now filtering back to the office. In some cases, “hybrid” means a given worker spends some days working remotely, others in the office. In other cases, it means that some workers are 100 percent remote, and others are in the office all the time. Regardless of the mix, this new hybrid workforce has serious ramifications for the IT admins who have to make sure everyone stays productive and secure wherever they are. To get some insight into what this brave new workplace will mean to IT departments, Iru commissioned a survey. Conducted by Dimensional Research, it asked more than 300 IT stakeholders around the world: Is the hybrid workplace temporary or here to stay? What kinds of devices are best for hybrid workers? Do Apple devices in particular offer any advantages or disadvantages when it comes to hybrid work? Here's what they told us.

Educational October 7, 2021