macOS Security Compliance Project: Simplifying Compliance in Education

By: Michael Scott, Systems Engineer

Supporting IT in education can pose unique challenges. As teaching evolves, instructors and students expect modern learning experiences and flexible technology options. This requires IT leaders to support student data, public research, BYOD programs, and globally accessible collaborative networks, often across thousands of diverse endpoints and dozens of physical locations. The modern pace of software updates significantly impacts this work. At the same time, institutions face rising regulatory and public pressures, such as:

• Meeting NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC requirements for federally funded research
• Complying with FERPA and HIPAA mandates protecting student and health data
• Satisfying insurance, and accreditation demands
• Addressing an increased threat of cybersecurity incidents

The macOS Security Compliance Project (mSCP) helps solve part of this challenge. Managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and supported by contributors from across the global Mac admin community, the project delivers tested, validated, and automated security guidance for Apple platforms. Security officers will find that the mSCP even provides the tools to accelerate cross-platform security policy adoption across schools, departments, and campuses.

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What the macOS Security Compliance Project Provides

The mSCP delivers actionable security guidance for Apple platforms, aligned to widely recognized frameworks and optimized for automation. It supports macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS with configuration baselines that are tested, documented, and open source.

Historically, compliance frameworks lagged behind operating system releases. IT teams often spent months reverse-engineering settings after new OS versions became available. The mSCP changes that — delivering day-one, community-tested baselines ready when teams need them. For example, the mSCP was updated for macOS 26 Tahoe before its public release in September 2025. The mSCP is:

• Built by practitioners → Developed by admins to solve real-world problems in education, government, and enterprise.
• Led by NIST → Ensures trusted, validated frameworks backed by recognized federal standards.
• Open-source and transparent → Fully available on GitHub for contributions, feedback, and issue tracking.
• Powered by the ecosystem → Contributions come from across the community, including NASA, the Department of Energy, DISA, device management service vendors, and education institutions themselves.

Apple enables secure capabilities within macOS and other Apple platforms. The project builds on Apple platform features to simplify compliance management.

mSCP automates the documentation creation process for multiple audiences, including internal IT, security, and leadership teams or external auditors.

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Supported Compliance Baselines

mSCP provides ready-to-use baselines aligned to widely adopted frameworks — critical for universities managing research labs, institutional security audits, and grant-funded projects, including:

• NIST SP 800-53 rev5 - Data security requirements common to education environments
• DISA STIG - Required for DoD-related research
• CIS Level 1 & 2 v8 - Secure general-purpose macOS devices
• INDIGO - Supports international research collaborations
• Custom Baselines - Customize the above, or build policies unique to your institution’s needs

Higher education often requires different baselines for different roles — for example, researchers handling CUI data need tighter controls than student labs or administrative Macs. Similarly, K-12 might require different baselines for business management systems, compared to teacher or student endpoints used for instruction. mSCP makes this possible without adding tools or complexity, and provides a framework for security decision makers to enumerate and document their security policies.

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Core Components of mSCP

The project organizes compliance into four key components:

• Rules - These are YAML-based definitions for individual security settings mapped to compliance controls, such as requiring FileVault encryption for Macs that contain student data
• Baselines - Groups of rules forming a compliance “recipe” tailored to frameworks. For example, an organization may need to apply the NIST 800-171 baseline to research program macOS devices.
• Scripts - Used to automate generation of documentation, device management profiles, and remediation workflows. A script could be used to quickly provide the security details of devices under an insurance audit
• Custom - An organization may want to Modify, add, or remove rules to fit institutional needs, such as excluding Bluetooth restrictions in student recording studios, or allowing AirDrop for teachers and students.

This modular approach lets organizations adapt compliance controls to teacher workflows, testing environments, and research labs — without one-size-fits-all tradeoffs.

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Automating Compliance with Device Management

mSCP integrates seamlessly with third-party Device Management Services. IT admins may generate configurations using open-source mSCP scripts, or GUI tools like Jamf Compliance Editor.

1. Deploy the configuration via device management to targeted groups, such as teacher macOS devices, researcher endpoints, or student loaner devices.
2. Automate checks and remediation with mSCP scripts to provide device configuration status, and take action to remediate current compliance rules.
3. Report status back to device management dashboards or SIEM solutions like Splunk or Microsoft Defender for ongoing monitoring.

For example, when rolling out devices running macOS 26 Tahoe, a university or school district can use mSCP to pre-test its baselines a week before release, deploy policies on day one, and confirm compliance across physical locations — without manual endpoint intervention.

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Outputs for IT, Auditors, and Leadership

mSCP generates documentation outputs tailored to multiple audiences, helping institutions streamline compliance reporting:

• For IT Admins → .mobileconfig files, shell scripts, and extension attributes for device management service integration.
• For Auditors → Auditor-ready PDFs and spreadsheets aligned to compliance frameworks.
• For Leadership → Summaries demonstrating institutional compliance for accreditation and funding purposes.

Outputs from the Jamf Compliance Editor include everything your device management service needs to deploy your baseline decisions to computers:

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These outputs are regenerated automatically whenever your policies change, keeping your documentation always up to date.

Assessing risk and defining appropriate security policies is a complex and ongoing practice. The practical demands of keeping up with the modern pace of software updates, audit requirements for multiple audiences, and instructional needs require modern solutions. Education organizations can meet these challenges with an automated endpoint security solution that leverages internationally-recognized and federally enforced security baselines. You can increase organizational safety and accountability, while recognizing empowering educational outcomes, using the mSCP.

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Getting Help

There are several resources where higher-ed IT teams can learn, collaborate, and stay informed:

• Apple Security Compliance Center → Official mSCP Guide
• NIST mSCP Project Page → Authoritative Resource
• mSCP GitHub Repository → Source, Issues, and Discussion
• Jamf Compliance Editor → Free GUI for Baseline Management
• MacAdmins Community → Join #macos_security_compliance on Slack for peer support.