Speakers: Stephen Grall
Level: Presentation
Excerpt: Many organizations have struggled with patching compliance in today’s era of Cybersecurity initiatives and directives. One of the biggest pain points of late has been keeping macOS up to date, especially given Apple’s irregular update release schedule. Balancing security with user productivity can be challenging. Organizations can customize workflows to best meet their unique needs by leveraging scripting, a script and notification-enabled MDM like Jamf Pro, and the softwareupdate command line tool built-in to macOS. Leveraging notification tools like jamfHelper, user-friendly workflows can be developed with customized deferral periods, as well as countdown to patching deployment enforcement.
Description: I currently use Jamf Pro as a means of managing Apple Software Updates at NCI. I plan to present an overview of the softwareupdate command line tool in macOS, changes over the past few years from Apple relative to Software Update methodology, information on how to leverage jamfHelper in scripts, and best practices for scripted automation of macOS updates, leveraging a decade of lessons-learned at NIH. This will go into ways of controlling which updates are available, methods of deploying macOS updates with Jamf (both scripted and non-scripted), as well as troubleshooting and workarounds for common issues and/or bugs still present in some releases of macOS relative to the deployment of these updates. If I am able to obtain permission from my employer, I may provide a sample script in full (as-is); otherwise, I will provide examples of specific functions and methodologies..
About the speaker
Stephen Grall
I am a Senior Mac Engineer working at the National Cancer Institute of National Institutes of Health. I have supported NIH on and off since 2013, mentoring many other Mac Engineers on best practices with Mac management. I have nearly 20 years of experience in Mac support in total.