Device management

All company-owned Macs (that is, all Macs that are for work purposes) are managed by the IT department with Mobile Device Management (MDM) software.

What is MDM?

MDM lets us securely configure devices by sending profiles and commands to a device. MDM also lets us gather information about the device and act on it. Finally, MDM ties the device to the organization, making sure that unless explicitly deregistered, devices are linked to our company. For you, MDM allows us to automate compliance related tasks and make a bunch of important and useful programs readily available to you.

The MDM software that we use is called Mosyle. If you’ve been at other companies that use Macs, they may have used MDM products from companies like Jamf or Microsoft.

How We Set Up MDM

As of mid-2023, if you are given a new Mac, it’s been purchased directly from Apple and is already linked to the company.

Note

If you are replacing a Mac early or if your Mac is going into storage and it was given to you before mid-2023, please contact a member of IT immediately. Your Mac needs to be onboarded and linked to the company for future use.

What We Can Do

MDM is powerful and lets us do a lot of things to protect our company, protect the data that we hold, manage the computers that we own, and make your day-to-day experience enjoyable. Our use of MDM is governed by our Rights and Responsibilities policy. We typically use MDM to:

• Manage software updates for macOS and apps;
• Enforce security policies (like enabling your firewall or enabling disk encryption);
• Audit what apps are installed on your computer;
• Deploy scripts that automate common tasks;
• Show you custom messages to do certain tasks like restart your computer or complete an update;