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Back in early October, IDC published a report about the perception that IT professionals had around various platforms and what keeps them up at night. The last sentence I think is a pretty good way to think about the life of an IT team. It’s, in some ways, about survival. Security threats are everywhere. Systems are always one bad configuration away from going down. It’s about ensuring that the employees you support have what they need to do their jobs. There’s one question in particular that highlights Apple’s position of strength in the enterprise, though.
How important would you say it is to have security built into a computer from the ground up —
including the silicon, the firmware, and the OS — to protect it from today’s, and in anticipation of
tomorrow’s threats?
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed an enterprise IT network from 2009 to 2021. Through his experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise grade Wi-Fi, 100s of Macs, and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for IT departments.
If you’d asked me what I thought the survey results for that question would have been, I would have initially thought 40%. The results show that 72% said very important. Only 1% of respondents said Not important at all. 27% said somewhat important. So let’s put it another way: 99% of surveyed IT professionals put importance on an end-to-end solution for firmware, chips, and the operating system. Said yet another way: 99% of IT professionals say Apple’s computers are the only ones that they trust. Maybe that’s a bit of a reach, but it’s something to consider
Apple Silicon isn’t just about speed – it’s about security
We’re basically 3 years into the Apple Silicon journey, and I’ve continued to tell people that it’s the biggest computing shift that I’ve seen in my lifetime. You could have bought the stock late 2020 MacBook Air and still using it today. It was that good at the time. What this survey highlights is the importance that IT and security professionals are putting on not just the security of software and the operating system, but also the supply chain. Fortinet has a pretty good recap of various supply chain hacks over the past few years, but the one most folks will remember is the Solar Winds incident from 2020. The hackers inserted malicious code into the Orion system during the supply chain process.
While Apple doesn’t manufacture all of their products in-house – they are responsible for the actual supply chains, though. They designed and developed the chips. They know how they work. They’ve built the tools to detect anomalies. They have insights into the end-to-end process. When another vendor outsources chips to one company while they manufacture the rest of the computer, they’re putting their customers in a trusting situation with another company. A PC manufacturer doesn’t design and build their own chips. They’re using someone else. Apple isn’t, and as supply chain hacks become more commonplace, it’s clear that IT professionals are starting to recognize the importance of Apple’s complete control over the chip, firmware, and hardware.
Wrap up
Security is one of our main pillars of value at Inter. We chose Mac because of their robust security features and streamlined ecosystem, which collectively reduced our IT workloads.
Guilherme Ximenes, Chief Technology Officer, Inter
When Apple competed against Microsoft in the enterprise on price alone – it lost. Today’s IT teams realize that hacks and breaches are much more costly than saving $200 on a laptop. In a world where you value security and productivity over bottom line cost, Apple is going to be the winner for the foreseeable future.
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