Enterprise features of iOS 12- What’s new?

Apple keeps on surprising its customers with every new version release. Earlier this week, Apple announced the release of its twelfth version of iOS, on 17th of September 2018. This release brought in a wide range of Enterprise features introduced by Apple that indeed will prove to be useful for iPhone/iPad users. Highly talked about features include Memoji, Grouped Notifications and most importantly, better overall performance for older phones, thus making the existing iPhones and iPads feel like new.

Few of the highly focused and highly interesting enterprise features of iOS 12 include:

1. Automatic date and time settings on supervised iOS devices.
2. OAuth support for managed accounts (applies to macOS 10.14 as well).
3. Password autofill restrictions on supervised iOS and macOS devices.
4. Commands for managing public apps and tvOS updates on Apple TV.

iOS 12 extends support to all devices that iOS 11 supported thus promising performance improvements for all the old devices. From the security point of view, iOS 12 has put forward the restricted USB mode that would ensure protection against physical attacks. Hexnode MDM is a leading Unified Endpoint Management solution that supports all the enterprise features of iOS 12.

Let’s have a look at a few of the prominent features of iOS 12 and get to know what’s new for the users, developers and most importantly, for the enterprise.

1. Improved performance: With iOS 12, the launching of apps becomes twice as fast when running multiple processes, such as activating the keyboard and camera to quickly complete the task at hand.
2. USB privacy and security: This new feature will make it more difficult to unlock an iOS device via USB connection. This feature restricts the USB-based accessories from accessing the data if the device has been locked for one hour.
3. CarPlay enhancements:Third-party navigation apps can now be used with UEM solutions thus offering unique features not found in Apple’s own Maps app. iOS 12 has refined its features in four major extents for CarPlay: performance improvements, faster startup sequence, smoother animations, and better communication with your app.
4. Password auto-fill: Users can take advantage of password auto-fill prompts on their devices, authenticated via TouchID or FaceID. This feature integrates with third-party password managers like 1Password, Dashlane and LastPass.
5. Password proximity requests: Devices in range of each other (iOS to macOS or tvOS for example) can share a password request, much like the handoff feature.
6. Password sharing: When connecting to a network for the first time, users can share the network password with other iOS devices using a mechanism similar to AirDrop for faster connectivity.
7. Contact management: Managed apps can edit contacts to unmanaged accounts, even if the managed apps are prevented from editing unmanaged destinations. Similarly, unmanaged apps can read contacts from managed accounts, even if the unmanaged apps are prevented from reading to managed destinations.
8. Critical alerts: This feature provides the app an option to mark a notification as critical thus allowing it to ignore Do not disturb and ringer settings.
9. Grouped notifications: Rather than having a long list of notifications on the lock screen, iOS 12 now groups notifications by app so users can quickly go through them based on priority.
10. OAuth verification: Open Authentication (OAuth) allows users to verify and connect to third-party apps without releasing their password with the help of a token that authorizes specific account information to be shared.
11. Device support: With the release of iOS 12, Apple ensures that it will be available on all devices that ran iOS 11, so IT teams can save cost by using their existing devices.
12. Allow Mail Drop: The Mail Drop feature allows the users to upload large files (up to 5GB) to iCloud for others to download by sending the corresponding link or preview.

S/MIME is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. iOS provides support for this standard thus allowing the users to send encrypted email messages. iOS 12 supports the following list of features associated with this standard:

1. S/MIME signing user overridable- Users can toggle S/MIME signing on/off in Settings.
2. S/MIME signing certificate UUID user overridable- Users can select the signing identity.
3. S/MIME encrypt by default- Enable S/MIME encryption by default. If Enable encryption per message option is disabled, this default cannot be changed by the user.
4. S/MIME encrypt by default user overridable- Users can override default encryption settings.
5. S/MIME encryption certificate UUID user overridable- Users can select the S/MIME encryption identity.
6. S/MIME enable encryption per message switch- Enable encryption per message.

iOS 12, with its latest features, is sure to enhance the security of the enterprises. With every update, Apple is focusing on making its OS more secure for its users. Let’s wait and see what next Apple has in store for its users.