The Iru Blog

Alexandre Morin

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8 min read

Reasons to Use Apple Business Manager

Apple Business Manager is a free service provided by Apple that allows organizations to manage three things: devices, apps, and accounts. Simply put, if your organization owns Apple devices, you should be using Apple Business Manager (or its education-sector equivalent, Apple School Manager). There’s literally no downside to it. Apple Business manager offers many benefits—some well-known, others less so—and it doesn’t cost a thing.

Recent News January 27, 2023

Alexandre Morin

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4 min read

Apple Device Supervision: What It Does, How to Implement It

If you manage Apple devices, "supervision" is one of the most important concepts you need to understand. It's often confused with management, but the two terms do not mean the same thing. In this article, you'll learn what supervision is, how it works, and what you need to know about it when managing Apple devices.

Educational January 13, 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

Steven Vogt

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10 min read

802.1X Enterprise Wi-Fi Authentication: What Mac Admins Need to Know

Most people—even some admins—don’t think twice about logging into the office Wi-Fi network. Typically, they just supply a username and password, their Apple devices log in, and they never think about what just happened. But there’s a lot going on under the hood to make that authentication work. There are a bewildering variety of authentication protocols—each with its own acronym, of course—enabling enterprise Wi-Fi. As someone who manages Apple devices in the enterprise, it’s typically up to you to make sure those wireless connections happen. So here’s what you need to know about enterprise authentication and how it works.

Recent News December 6, 2022

Patrick Gallagher

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10 min read

How to Plan a Large-Scale Deployment of Apple Devices

A few months ago, we told you about how you—as an IT admin in the enterprise—can think about the mass deployment of Apple devices. Our main point then: When it comes to deploying hundreds or thousands of Apple devices at a time, enterprise admins have a lot to learn from their colleagues in education, who do it every year.

Educational November 15, 2022

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

Emalee Firestein

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10 min read

Mac Troubleshooting: Our Top Tips

At some point in your IT career, you’ve no doubt spent a good chunk of your time stationed on the help desk, fielding questions from users and helping them troubleshoot their Mac computers. During that Mac troubleshooting, you’ve probably compiled a list of their most common problems, along with your suggested solutions.

Educational September 23, 2022

Patrick Gallagher

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7 min read

Deploying Apple Devices: What Enterprises Can Learn from Education

When you think of mass deployments of Apple devices, you might typically think of schools. IT admins who work in education know all about deploying hundreds, if not thousands, of devices at once and what that requires because they do it every year. They know it’s no trivial task. While they might try to make the process seem simple to the outside world, the truth is that it takes an incredible amount of planning and preparation to deploy thousands of devices at once.

Thought Leadership June 3, 2022

Caleb Basinger

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6 min read

What the Mac Has Learned About Security from iPhone and iPad

Mac users have long enjoyed the platform’s open approach to computing. There was an exposed file system, no limitations on how many apps you could run at once, and scripts that took action when triggered by events. The only barrier to doing whatever you wanted was when the OS crashed or became unusable. The openness of the platform gave users and IT administrators alike plenty of flexibility. Then iOS came along. Because Apple was able to start fresh with iPhone OS (before it became iOS), because the mobile operating system was built from the ground up and didn’t have to worry about backward compatibility, the company was able to build a security model into iPhone and iPad devices that was forward-looking and designed for an environment in which connectivity was constant and security threats were pervasive.

Thought Leadership May 20, 2022

Matt Wilson

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8 min read

APIs and Apple Device Management: A Guide for Mac Admins

Application programming interfaces—better known as APIs—make it possible for one service to talk to another without needing to know how the other one works. They create a common language that disparate services can use to communicate. As such, they’re the key to automating device management workflows. If you’re an Apple IT administrator, you’re using APIs all the time (even if you don’t know it), and so you need to know how they work. Here’s a high-level overview.

Educational May 13, 2022

Alexandre Morin

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4 min read

How to Troubleshoot Apple Business Manager

Maybe a batch of new iPhone devices you just bought aren’t showing up in Apple Business Manager. Or licenses you recently purchased from Apps and Books can’t be found in your device management solution. Or even worse, perhaps your Apple fleet is no longer responding to MDM commands.

Educational May 10, 2022

Steven Vogt

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6 min read

The Great Debate: Should You Set Up Users as Admin or Standard?

What kind of accounts should you create when you provision Mac computers for your users: admin or standard? It’s an age-old question in Apple IT. It’s an argument that pulls on many threads, including user convenience, IT workloads, and organizational security. And it has no easy, one-size-fits-all solution, which is why it’s been around so long. To dig into that argument a bit and tease out some of those threads, Kandji’s Steven Vogt chatted recently with Rich Trouton. Rich has been doing Mac and server administration for over 20 years, in a variety of environments from higher ed and government to advertising and software development. He’s currently at SAP, where he supports that company’s Apple community. Rich has also written extensively about managing Apple devices for Peachpit, Apress, and MacTech Magazine; his most recent book with co-author Charles Edge is Apple Device Management: A Unified Theory of Managing Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs. He was also instrumental in bringing the SAP Privileges app—which addresses many of the concerns discussed below—to the Mac admin community. Here’s a recap of that conversation. Check out the entire presentation here.

Thought Leadership April 29, 2022

Mike Boylan

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10 min read

Mac Logging and the log Command: A Guide for Apple Admins

As an IT admin, you’ve almost certainly had to check some form of log when investigating a problem. Logs tell the story of what’s happening on a system, so they can be enormously helpful in both troubleshooting issues and in learning why the system is behaving the way that it is.

Educational April 27, 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 18, 2022