Mac Admins Podcast

Apple’s version of passkeys are the latest piece of a sprawling identity picture for the Apple platform that isn’t widely supported just yet - which is a perfect time to start learning about it.  Passkeys aren’t just Apple; they’re supported on Mac, Windows, Android, and even in our browsers. This evolution in WebAuthn's capabilities means we don’t need physical tokens (although that’s still an option) to have a second factor in auth flows - nor is that other factor tied to a phone number, making it more secure. But for admins, there are plenty of questions we need to figure out. What do we have instead of a username and what is there in lieu of a password? As we develop solutions that work with webauthn, we often use a reference implementation at webauthn.io to test functionality. Our guest today is one of the people behind that site, Matt Miller.

• Tom Bridge - @[email protected]
• Charles Edge - @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom

Guests:

• Matthew Miller - @[email protected]

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript (brought to you this week by Alectrona)

Links:

• WebAuthn Debugger
• Project to paste in JSON versions of responses for WebAuthn calls and see their internals: SimpleWebAuthn
• Chrome extension project to view navigator.credentials endpoints and (if the most recent code checks clean and gets committed in time) paste in JSON versions of responses for WebAuthn calls and see their internals: WebAuthn Inspector
• Standards body definitions for WebAuthn: Web Authentication: An API for accessing Public Key Credentials - Level 2
• Matt Miller’s Blog - Matt's Headroom
• SimpleWebAuthn

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Kolide
• dataJAR
• Alectrona
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

We have these computers. And they are truly bastion hosts. Nothing comes in, and only that with which we want goes out. They’re perfect when we finish setting them up. Then people make changes and put apps on there. The changes we can mitigate, the apps require a little more analysis. A common strategy to manage that risk is to employ a reputation-based access such as dictated by zero trust - another is to test apps for vulnerabilities, which in a way feeds back into the zero trust decision mechanism in the end. But what kind of tests can be effective, especially since those compiled runtimes don’t tell us a lot about what’s going on. We’ll chat about this paradigm with today’s guest Niels Hofmans, and look for ways to fill up that task list for 2023!

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• Charles Edge - @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom

Guests:

• Niels Hofmans - @hazcod

Transcript:

Transcription of this episode brought to you by Alectrona

Click here to read the transcript

Links:

• Intigriti 
• Niels’ GitHub
• OWASP Foundation
• OWASP Mobile Application Security
• CodeQL
• NVD
• Belgian Beer Waffles

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Kolide
• dataJAR
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

Spring is coming, and with it, MacADUK’s return to Brighton, England for this year’s first European Mac Admin Conference. We’re talking with two of the organizing committee, Alex Hawes and James Ridsdale about this year’s conference, what attendees can expect, and what’s important to them in a Mac Admins Conference.

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• CHarles Edge - @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom

Guests:

• Alex Hawes - @alexdthawes
• James Ridsdale - @james_ridsdale

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript

Links:

• 2023 Speakers – Mac SysAdmin & Developer Conference – MacAD.UK

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Kolide
• dataJAR
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

According to a recent PDQ survey, 85% of people who manage devices are a team of 1. Many of our guests have a small scope to their job: they manage Macs and/or iPhones. But many in IT manage, well, everything. That means being a jack of many traits: knowing just enough about networking, switches, routers, every piece of software used in an organization, budgeting, or whatever is on the docket at the moment. Today we’re going to cover what it’s like to cover such breadth with Ylan. 

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• Charles Edge - @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom

Guests:

• Ylan Muller - @HeyItsYlan

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Kolide
• dataJAR
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

It’s just us again, and that means we’re talking about everything going on right now. Layoffs, new hardware, Ventura and Deferrals, and then Passkeys, Hardware Tokens and Apple IDs, and more.

• Tom Bridge, Principal Product Manager, JumpCloud – @tbridge777
• Charles Edge, CTO, Bootstrappers.mn – @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom, Senior Sales Engineer, Jamf – @marcusransom

• What explains recent tech layoffs, and why should we be worried? | Stanford News
• MacBook Pro 14- and 16-inch – Tech Specs – Apple
• Mac mini – Technical Specifications – Apple
• HomePod – Apple
• Kensington Locking Kit for Mac Studio – Apple

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include:

Rick Goody, Mike Boylan, Melvin Vives, William (Bill) Stites, Anoush d’Orville, Jeffrey Compton, M.Marsh, Hamlin Krewson, Adam Burg, A.J. Potrebka, James Stracey, Timothy Perfitt, Nate Cinal, William O’Neal, Sebastian Nash, Command Control Power, Stephen Weinstein, Chad Swarthout, Daniel MacLaughlin, Justin Holt, William Smith, and Weldon Dodd

We’ve wanted to have an episode with MacPaw since far before Ukraine was invaded on February 24th, 2022. Then we pushed it back over and over out of respect for everything going on. But we’re super-excited to finally have someone on the podcast  to talk about what it was like to go through an invasion, the technical infrastructure, tooling, emotional toll, and how they still managed to get work done 11 months into a war. We welcome Vira Tkachenko to the pod to take us through her journey.

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• Charles Edge - @cedge318

Guests:

• Vira Tkachenko - @iVira

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript

Links:

• MacPaw Foundation
• About MacPaw
• MacPaw’s Operations amidst the Russian Aggression against Ukraine
• Ukraine's MacPaw releases SpyBuster, designed to beat Russian hacks | AppleInsider
• MacPaw Inc. · GitHub
• How Ukraine’s MacPaw got its business ready for war | Computerworld

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Kolide
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

One of the most useful things we do is to automate tasks. Some of those tasks might be opening and closing tickets; others would be making a change on an endpoint that we want to behave in a specific way. We buy devices, or procure them, and we dispose of them when they’re out of date or broken. Between those tasks, we on-board and off-board the humans who use the devices. We make sure the devices meet our requirements. Much of what is expected of us wouldn’t be possible without teams of people running around looking at settings without software that helps us along the way. The tasks themselves, while we feel are pretty unique on Apple devices, are often similar across platforms. We’ll chat with Flora Walters in today’s episode about her journey, scope, and some of the tools that make her job possible in today’s episode.

• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
• Charles Edge - @cedge318

Guests:

• Flora Walters - LinkedIn

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Black Glove
• Mosyle
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

We wish we could just talk nerd. But the world is a complicated place - and there are questions we would be remiss if we didn’t ask! This week, we are honored to have Yuri Vlasyuk join us as our special guest. Yuri is the CEO of iLand and an organizer of MacAdminsUA. We will of course talk nerd, but also much more!

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• Charles Edge - @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom

Guests:

• Yuri Vlasyuk - @iyura

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Mosyle
• Kolide
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

2022 is just about over, so let’s talk about everything that’s happened this year, as well as make some outrageous and likely wrong predictions for 2023!

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom
• Emily Kausalik-Whittle - @emilyooo

Links:

• How To: Get the currently logged in user, in a more Apple approved way – macmule
• Getting the current user in macOS – Update – Scripting OS X
• About the Mac Admins Foundation
• About X World – AUC
• MacAD.UK
• MacAdmins Conference
• MacDevOpsYVR
• Jamf Nation User Conference
• WWDC22 - Apple Developer
• Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Notebooks - Apple
• Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac desktops and displays - Apple
• AppleSeed for IT
• Rapid Security Responses on Apple devices
• Introduction to Apple platform deployment
• Announcing Kandji's Support for Declarative Device Management
• Jamf Announces Same-Day Support for macOS Ventura and iPadOS 16
• Adopt declarative device management - WWDC22 - Videos - Apple Developer
• Kolide
• GitHub - macadmins/nudge: A tool for encouraging the installation of macOS security updates.
• Create user-notifications on macOS with swiftDialog
• Mactracker
• Apple Will Buy Chips Produced at Arizona Factory - CNET
• View activities in the Dynamic Island on iPhone - Apple Support
• Turning Off Work with iOS 15 Focus Modes – Cannonball
• GitHub - usnistgov/macos_security: macOS Security Compliance Project
• Compliance Editor
• Duolingo
•  

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Mosyle
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson

The nature of the role of a Mac admin is different at big and small companies. Like many jobs, we have a smaller scope in larger companies - but potentially a larger impact. Every choice or line of code at a true enterprise scale has a resounding effect. At smaller companies, we take the blinders off given that we don’t step on other people’s toes. The role of a Mac admin might include security, compliance, developer operations, and even business analysis. Today, we’re going to talk with Nate Walck about his journey from a CPE at a large enterprise to working at a startup and how that transition has been.

• Tom Bridge - @tbridge777
• Charles Edge - @cedge318
• Marcus Ransom - @marcusransom

Guests:

• Nate Walck

Transcript:

Click here to read the transcript

Sponsors:

• Kandji
• Black Glove
• Mosyle
• Watchman Monitoring

If you're interested in sponsoring the Mac Admins Podcast, please email [email protected] for more information.

Get the latest about the Mac Admins Podcast, follow us on Twitter! We're @MacAdmPodcast!

The Mac Admins Podcast has launched a Patreon Campaign! Our named patrons this month include Weldon Dodd, Damien Barrett, Justin Holt, Chad Swarthout, William Smith, Stephen Weinstein, Seb Nash, Dan McLaughlin, Joe Sfarra, Nate Cinal, Jon Brown, Dan Barker, Tim Perfitt, Ashley MacKinlay, Tobias Linder Philippe Daoust, AJ Potrebka, Adam Burg, & Hamlin Krewson