This week of the Mac Admins Podcast, we spoke with Jamf's VP of Product & Solutions Engineering Matt Vlasach to talk about Network Relays, and how they can be used to secure network traffic. Relays are different from -- and newer than -- a VPN in a lot of ways, and they're not as well understood. Matt joins hosts Marcus (Jamf SE) and Tom (JumpCloud Product Director) to talk about what makes Relays new and special for Mac Admins. Relays are a complicated technology behind the scenes, but Matt breaks it down into some key components for Mac Admins to understand.
The [MASQUE protocol](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/masque/about/) that drives Relays is highly secure and private, and the client is built directly into the operating system, all you need to turn it on is an MDM Profile, and if necessary, a per-app VPN. Matt talks at length about Relays are a "yes, and" technology that can go hand in hand with your regular VPN client, allowing you to ensure that key company data works is always secure, and available only to devices that are managed. Getting to a zero-trust posture -- a security goal for a lot of organizations -- is all about validating that a device is secure at the time of access. Relays, which are provided via MDM configuration profile, can be combined with Device Attestation with an MDM to ensure that your organization has a secure device at the time of authentication, authorization, and access to crucial, private, and secure organization data.
This new technology also works in new ways to ensure secure topology when older VPNs won't, or can't, do the job.
Marcus and Tom take Matt through the paces to cover some of the history of Relays, who you can use Relays with natively, and how you might adapt your environment to this critical new technology as part of this episode.
The Mac Admins Podcast has a lot of resource episodes like this one, and the [back catalog has all kinds of great deep dives into new technology](https://podcast.macadmins.org/page/2/), from [episodes on Jamf Setup Manager](https://podcast.macadmins.org/2024/09/10/episode-380-jamf-setup-manager/), to [interviews with product managers about minimum OS version requirements](https://podcast.macadmins.org/2024/09/19/episode-381-enforcing-minimum-os-with-bushrat-chowdhury/), the Mac Admins Podcast is here for you if you manage Apple devices at work.
