Protecting clients’ IP with Jamf Protect at Jacob Bailey

When Mac-based design house Jacob Bailey discovered that their Windows-centric virus protection software was no longer going to support their Mac estate following the release of Big Sur, they set out to find, test and roll out an Apple-centric solution in time to meet clients’ strict security standards. Luckily, our Jamf experts were on hand to help…

By Liz Sunter January 05, 2021

“We’ve always been a Mac house, but we used Windows-centric antivirus software and we realised it wasn’t delivering what we needed,” explained IT technician Marc Chapman. “A lot of our clients have very high security standards for their suppliers, and we need to prove we can meet those standards when we go in and pitch.”

The company had previously rolled out Jamf, the world’s leading device management solution for Mac, in order to improve their IT team’s control over permissions, file access and movement.

“Between adding Jamf and upgrading to the latest version of macOS, it became clear we couldn’t keep using Sophos,” said Marc. “We needed to find an endpoint security tool that ran on MacOS, was futureproof and provided the security and antivirus requirements we required. And because the rest of our deployment is zero-touch, there was a real risk of our Antivirus software opening us up to potential security violations.”
 

"Jigsaw24 were great at making sure they understood what we needed to achieve and making sure everyone involved in the project stayed on the same page."

Searching for Mac-centric security

As Jacob Bailey’s existing Apple and Jamf partner, we were the first people they asked about finding a Mac-centric solution that would mesh with Jamf’s device management toolkit. Our team had one answer: Jamf’s own endpoint security solution, Jamf Protect.

“The Jigsaw24 team were great, and fully understood what we needed to achieve. They ensured everyone was on the same page when it came to what was being implemented,” said Marc. “We took your advice on the best way to set up Jamf Protect and it was up and working as quickly as possible, with no down time.”

Building trust with zero-touch testing

Following a live demo, our team set Jacob Bailey up with test licences of Jamf Protect. These would be deployed to a select few users over the air to test Protect’s integration with Jacob Bailey’s other systems and its compatibility with their zero-touch, self-service IT philosophy.

“A lot of the Windows solutions we’d considered were difficult to deploy, but we already had Jamf, and Protect is integrated into that already – we know the interface and how it works. So on the day of the deployment, our users didn’t notice the difference. There was no disruption to their workflow, they didn’t know anything had changed, but the security on their Mac had suddenly been greatly improved. There was no sense that IT were doing something big, or that the install was a hinderance.”

A key takeaway from the trial was how easy it was to deploy Protect over the air, even to new devices. Because Protect could be installed automatically without the user’s participation, the time between a new user starting and their machine being secured was effectively cut down to zero – a huge help for a company trying to secure an ISO 27001 accreditation, and make sure their day to day operations met Cyber Essentials guidelines and CIS benchmarks.

But Jamf and Jamf Protect also offered the Jacob Bailey team more room to customise their endpoint protection. “It was important to us that the solution had the potential to include more advanced functionality in the future,” said Marc. “If we’re asked to meet a new benchmark or standard a year down the road, we need to be able to develop the solution to meet that new compliance need, and combining Jamf and Protect makes that far easier for us.”

"It was so simple that users didn’t notice anything had changed, but the security of their Macs has been greatly improved."

An invisible rollout

Once Jacob Bailey signed off on installing Jamf Protect, our team delivered hands-on training to make sure Jacob Bailey’s staff could understand everything that it does, from deployment to planning to effective daily use. We then wrote a script to remove the old antivirus and a policy to install Jamf Protect, which we deployed to machines across the organisation.

“Having this will help us down the road to our ISO 27001 accreditation, which will help us attract globally recognised clients,” said Marc. “The fact that we managed to get Jamf Protect in place without anyone noticing a change to their workflow is a huge benefit too – a lot of people think of IT rollouts as disruptive, but this was incredibly easy.”

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