Mosyle’s AccessMule makes employee access a little easier for SMBs

Apple device management vendor Mosyle has introduced AccessMule, an easy-to-use workflow platform designed to address a specific set of small business needs related to granting, managing, auditing, sharing, storing, and removing employee access from company systems.

These protections are particularly important when on-boarding and off-boarding employees. 

To understand why this matters, it’s important to consider that the main source of cybersecurity breaches among all businesses is not hackers per se, but intentional or unintentional actions performed by employees. That human factor is behind 74% of all security breaches, according to 2023 research from Verizon.

Mosyle has its own research to explain the problem. 

Employee access is a time bomb

According to that data:

Around 87% of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) say they cannot immediately verify which employees have access to company permissions.

Roughly the same percent of SMBs also fail to promptly revoke employee access when they leave.

Nearly 90% of companies have found former employees still have access to company applications and files, even after they leave the company.

None of these risks are good, of course — particularly in the context of an unravelling consensus around cybersecurity. So, it makes sense for companies to put sufficient protections in place today rather than face attacks in the future. 

Mosyle encountered challenges managing the on/off-boarding process at first. “The decision to build AccessMule was born out of necessity at Mosyle” said the company’s CEO, Alcyr Araujo. “Later, we realized it wasn’t just a gap for our organization, but a fundamental problem that needed to be solved for all SMBs. We’re launching AccessMule today as an independent subsidiary that will empower organizations with a high-quality, secure and efficient access and password management platform at an affordable price.”

What does AccessMule provide?

Mosyle’s wholly-owned service provider will provide a range of tools designed to defend against the consequences of lax employee security. The main focus is to automate those elements of access control that SMBs often fail to manage. That means tools to automate onboarding and offboarding processes, along with controls to assign access based on roles and overall oversight reporting so it is possible to check who has corporate access at any given time. 

Additional features include bult-in password management, safe password sharing, encryption sharing, and support for shared multi-factor authentication (MFA). Role-based access control (RBAC) features grant permissions in bulk, making it easy to assign permissions for new employees based on their role with a single action. All of these tools and services are available via an easy-to-use portal, the company said. The idea is that IT can maintain oversight on device and employee security, helping them better protect their company.

The ever booming Apple enterprise

Mosyle’s is just one of a range of announcements to emerge from across Apple’s enterprise value chain since WWDC. Just last week, Jamf published its own in-depth Apple-focused security report, while open-source device management vendor Fleet recently announced $27 million in new series B funding to help accelerate development of its own open platform for both cloud- and self-hosted device management for organizations of all kinds. Another vendor, Addigy, recently introduced its own new security partnership with CyberFOX. 

It is usual for Apple’s enterprise partners to begin making service announcements subsequent to WWDC. This is usually inspired by Apple’s moves to enhance enterprise support in its products at the event. It is possible that all reputable Apple device management partners have now begun working with the new Apple betas and enterprise features it is building for introduction this fall.

Apple at WWDC introduced a host of new enterprise-focused improvements, including better support for Apple Accounts in the enterprise, improvements in device management, and a significant enhancement in the quality and quantity of device information IT can access from across their fleets. The latter means tech will even be able to audit MAC address, Activation Lock statues, storage, and cellular information, as well as AppleCare coverage. Platform SSO, App management, and device sharing tools were also improved at WWDC.

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