Welcome to Brown’s Bytes! Your weekly insight from Mobliciti’s CTO Andy Brown. Follow #brownsbytes
2nd December 2022
Guess who’s back… back again!
Massive apologies to regular readers (hello Mum!) as it has been a while since a Byte appeared… in my defence there has been quite a bit of change since my last update. I may well do a Byte on this in the future as there is a lot of exciting news now Mobliciti is part of Kocho…
So normal service is being resumed… which means I need to talk about Apple and iOS again!
Rapid Security Response
Catchy name… unlike ‘Dynamic Island’ this new feature clearly hasn’t been named by the marketing department! But I would argue this is actually far bigger news for Enterprise Admins.
Anyone who regularly reads these updates will know that I will mention quite often that iOS/iPadOS creates a bit of a challenge when it comes to updates. The problem is simple – every minor or major update is delivered as a monolithic update to the whole Operating System of the device.
This means that Security patches get bunged together with feature enhancement and bug fixes into large updates. Crucially, if these updates contain a security fix it means you get the trade-off between security patching and feature change/breaking things.
If only Apple would split out Security Fixes…
You know, a bit like Windows Patching has been since… forever!!
Well, Rapid Security Response is precisely this. Currently in iOS 16.2 Beta, the feature is being tested… this is a massive change for Enterprise Admins!
We’ll (very) soon have a world where Apple can roll out Security Fixes to the OS and Browser as small updates outside of the traditional model.
To quote from Apple’s Platform Deployment page:
‘Rapid Security Responses that involve the operating system require the device to restart. Rapid Security Responses that involve Safari require the user to quit the app.’
Some updates won’t even need a restart… wow!
All those Zero-day patches will be much more straightforward to get deployed quickly. Time will tell how often these updates come out, but it could mean far, far more individual updates coming out over time.
I’m pleased to say there are even new MDM controls for this feature out of the box.
All in all, this is exactly what Admins have been asking for and places Apple even further ahead of Android when it comes to security patching. Fair play Apple!
But, as this is a change to how patches are deployed, you now need to update your processes. As I mentioned, this could result in a lot more to keep an eye on.
You have been warned…
Or, you could be a Mobliciti Managed Service customer, in which case we’re updating our processes for customers already!
If you’d like to know more about how we help with the total management and support of the mobile estate, then please do get in touch!
