Apple

Jamf Connect Documentation

Solution
Application
Jamf Connect
Content Type
Technical Documentation
Utilities & Services
ft:locale
en-US

Configuring Jamf Connect's Zero Trust Network Access capabilities via Per-App VPN allows you to managed network traffic at the app-level rather than the device-level. Common use cases include:

  • You are migrating from another VPN, where Per-App VPN was standard and desired behavior.

  • You only want to enable specific apps to use the VPN, to separate work from personal data for security purposes.

  • You do not want a device-wide VPN due to privacy or transparency reasons (for example, for BYOD devices or privacy-centric organizations).

  • You do not use the Jamf Protect's content filtering or endpoint and network protection capabilities, and only intend to enable zero-trust access on managed devices.

Important:

When Zero Trust Network Access is deployed, keep the following in mind:

  • Per-App VPN is only available on managed devices with iOS, iPadOS, or macOS.

  • Only the source applications and Safari domains you specify will be subject to Jamf Protect's capabilities services. Any device-wide capabilities—such as endpoint and network protection or internet content filtering and usage controls— require a secondary configuration of the device; for example, Global HTTP Proxy or DNS profile.

  • All traffic from a specified source application will route from the device to the Jamf Security Cloud cloud via a Zero Trust Network Access micro-tunnel. You must define access policies for all of the destinations (hostnames) each app uses. Unclassified traffic—that is traffic that is not attributed to an access policy—is dropped for security reasons.

  • Whenever the Per-App VPN configuration is changed by an administrator, the user must open the Jamf Trust app for the new configuration to apply.

Jamf Security Cloud WireGuard VPN supports Apple's Per-App VPN secure networking mode.

On Apple platforms, Per-App VPN requires that the MDM server configures and manages the apps and Safari domains that are to use the Jamf Security Cloud VPN.

This is done by deploying a Per-App VPN configuration profile from your organization's MDM server to target devices. This profile contains:

  • Information targeting the Jamf Trust app as the provider of the Per-App VPN connection

  • A mapping of the apps (by their UEM server-issued identifiers), if any, that are to use the Per-App VPN

  • A list of Safari domains, if any, that are to use the Per-App VPN

The creation and management of this profile differs by UEM solution vendor in their management admin user interface, but the resulting configuration profiles to drive Per-App VPN behavior are ultimately the same.

After being pushed to end user devices, Jamf Trust will "adopt" the UEM-delivered Per-App VPN configuration instead of creating a device-wide VPN configuration when the user activates the app. This preserves the app and Safari domain definitions that were configured by the administrator, effectively deploying the app into Per-App VPN mode on the device.

From then on, the Per-App VPN will only activate and handle traffic from the defined apps and Safari domains, without any specific user action required to enable or disable the VPN.

Note:

The Zero Trust Network Access policy engine still applies to this traffic. This means that although app/Safari domain traffic traverses the Per-App VPN to the Jamf Security Cloud cloud, this traffic must still pass the access and security requirements as defined in Access Policies to route to enterprise destinations successfully.