MDM for laptops? No thanks. It's a world of security theatre - the main purpose of which seems to be to stop me doing my job. Also it invariably means Windows.
MDM doesn't have to be a heavy-handed thing and solutions exist for macOS at least. Even something that just makes sure the OS and critical apps always have the latest security patches - and ideally pushes those changes when it’s not disruptive to the host – can go a long way.
From what I can remember when I set this up last all our MDM did was:
- Ensure full disk encryption
- Time limit on how long people can defer OS upgrades
- Report on software installed and versions
- Enforce somewhat complex password
- Enforce password after screen has become locked
- Allow us to remote wipe the machine if lost/stolen
It didn't stop you from installing / uninstalling anything - even itself. Although if your machine stopped phoning home for a certain amount of time we had some alerts set up for the IT support team to follow up.
unfortunately yes - I was in charge of this decision as a previous employer and I went with Macs+JAMF even though I'm a die hard Linux user. My work around was to run a fullscreen Linux VM but that does defeat the purpose somewhat.
I'm hoping things are better now - I think Canonical have some sort of MDM for Ubuntu but I couldn't figure out how to pay for it.
