Everything You Need to Know About Apple’s First-Ever Rapid Security Response Update
As cybersecurity becomes more important for businesses around the world, Apple has taken proactive steps to secure its operating systems. In a recently released update, the company issued its first-ever Rapid Security Response feature to address undisclosed vulnerabilities in its macOS, iOS, and iPadOS systems.
With vulnerabilities happening faster than ever — often leaving companies exposed before they can respond — this update marks a crucial leap forward for CISOs, CSOs, CIOs, IT directors, and other IT administrators tasked with ensuring their networks remain secure at all times. As such, we need to understand the threats and how to protect people from being exposed.
With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about Apple’s historic Rapid Security Response update, why it was released, and how to implement it across all your devices and networks.
Why Apple’s Rapid Security Response Update Is Critical
Classified at the highest level of security, a Rapid Security Response typically addresses an active exploit that exists in your Apple fleet today — allowing you to quickly close the vulnerability. With this proactive approach, you don’t have to wait for the next software update to mitigate any risks. Instead, you can ensure a faster-than-usual update supported by immediate deployment. This deepened commitment to customer security not only protects Apple users from potential attacks but also deters hackers.
While Apple didn’t explicitly acknowledge an active threat in its news release accompanying the Rapid Security Response patch and update launch this week, the intended use of Rapid Security Responses suggests that an ongoing and detrimental security issue could be at play.
Managing Rapid Security Response
Rapid Security Releases are specifically designed to be small and able to be applied to Macs and iOS devices quickly while mitigating device user disruptions. While a reboot may still be required, Rapid Security Responses will download and install much more quickly than traditional full OS upgrades.
And, Rapid Security Responses are easily identifiable. A traditional Apple OS version is identified as “13.4.1”, a Rapid Security Response would appear as “13.4.1 (a)”. Plus, you can quickly push these upgrades to all your devices managed by Addigy.
To give you additional peace of mind, the Rapid Security Response feature includes an option for end-users to ‘Remove & Restart’ the update in the event it causes any disruptive issues.
How is Sewelltech Managing Rapid Security Response
Sewelltech utilizes the industry-leading Addigy MDM platform to manage your Mac and iOS fleet. With Addigy, software updates, including the new Rapid Security Response, are done automatically and performed during the evening hours to be least disruptive to your users.
What makes Addigy stand apart from other MDM providers like JAMF is the ability to deploy these types of patches quickly and with little to no hands-on involvement by our team, your team, or your users. Also, recent updates within Addigy have also made it possible for hung or non-responsive update processes to be restarted to ensure all security and OS updates are being deployed across your entire fleet quickly.
As soon as Apple releases a new Security Response patch, Addigy will trigger all devices that meet the requirement for the update to go ahead and download the update and then install it during the maintenance window time frame.
A Smart Step Forward
Apple’s historic Rapid Security Response update proves, once again, how seriously the company takes user security. Apple remains committed to providing secure, up-to-date software that offers the best possible protection for user data.
If you have further questions about Apple’s Rapid Security Response Patch or have other questions, please feel free to reach out to your Sewelltech team, and they will try to answer all your questions or find answers to your questions.
