Allow iCloud For Notes Only

[RickyFH]

Hello Folks,

We have an interesting request that came through recently and are looking for some guidance.

There are a handful of employees using Apple Notes and they would like to backup this content to iCloud. We have Apple Business but are not actively provisioning accounts for employees. As a matter of fact, we are just blocking iCloud across our environment. We are governed by HITRUST and have to be mindful about what content is stored, especially on personal accounts. 

We are just trying to find a way to protect against data loss for these individuals. Is is possible to force iCloud logins only to company-owned accounts? We really don't want to deal with activation locks, etc. in addition to the aforementioned DLP concerns.

Thanks!

[spesh · Accepted solution]

There are a couple of ways you can approach this. 

Option 1: Continue to use Apple Notes and iCloud, but create managed Apple ID's through Apple Business Manager for each user wanting to use Apple Notes. You can create a smart group with these users and set the smart group as an exclusion to your iCloud Restrictions Configuration Profile. Providing managed Apple IDs would prohibit being completely locked out of a Mac from Activation Lock, among other benefits. Check out the Apple Support documentation here. 

Option 2: Look into an alternative note-taking application. My organization has an E5 Office365 license, which includes Microsoft OneNote. This works for us because it automatically syncs with end-users OneDrive accounts so they do not lose data. OneNote isn't the greatest, but it gets the job done. Its possible your company is already paying for a similar service that you are not utilizing. 

Hope this helps!