The ongoing evolution of Apple in the enterprise is undeniable. As a result, the growing ecosystem now includes various alternative approaches to enterprise device security and management.
With this in mind, I recently spoke with Mike McNeil, CEO of Fleet, an open-source endpoint security company that recently added support for osquery for script execution of managed devices for its business clients.
Open-source for the Mac enterprise
The advantage of this is that it allows admins who cannot administer their Macs via conventional mobile device management platforms to accomplish tasks such as remote lock/wipe or executing remote “raw” MDM commands. (Regular readers might recall we spoke with Fleet last spring when the company had just introduced its own cross-platform, open-source take on device management.
That’s when we also learned that Fleet’s co-founder, Zach Wasserman, was also a co-creator of osquery, which provides some synchronicity to the company’s latest move.
What is Fleet?
Fleet is built with an open architecture and embraces GitOps, allowing IT departments to approve script changes and execute them on demand. This approach means enterprise security teams can run pre-approved scripts via a simple REST API, which provides opportunities for flexible device management.
While this won’t fit every enterprise, Fleet believes that the open-source nature of what it provides gives business owners a flexible solution with which to manage and protect their hybrid IT operations.
What it provides: from read-only to script execution
“The most significant advantage for Mac Admins with Fleet’s remote script execution capabilities comes to admins who cannot administer their macOS devices via Mobile Device Management (MDM),” said Wasserman. “Fleet allows you to escalate from a read-only system to a script execution system, allowing for not just monitoring but remediation as well. Previously, this was only possible for users with control over the device via MDM.”
Wasserman also explained that the system delivers granular access to infrastructure that’s difficult to achieve using other systems. For customers, “being able to be more exact allows them to go to these teams less, which saves everybody time,” he said.
The beauty of an open-source approach is that this kind of information might be easier to find, at least for some users in some scenarios.
Build out better
It also limits the tendency to keep throwing software at problems. He cited a customer who said: “Half the problem is that our executives just keep buying things and tacking on new tools. IT and security budgets fluctuate with the trends, and right now we don’t have much extra cash to play with, even if buying something was the answer.”
He thinks it makes more sense to use an architecture that can be more easily extended to handle new challenges, rather than end up with multiple applications running…
2023-11-13 18:41:03
Link from www.computerworld.com