Report: Safari is a major shadow IT blind spot in enterprise Apple environments

A new report commissioned by Parallels and conducted by Omdia warns that Safari may be the most significant shadow IT blind spot in enterprises running Apple devices. The survey of 400 IT and cybersecurity professionals found that while Safari is widely used on Macs, it is formally supported by only 46% of organizations. By comparison, Google Chrome is formally supported by 88% of organizations and Microsoft Edge by 84%. The report notes that 27% of organizations say Safari is in use but only informally supported, meaning IT teams are not actively managing the browser through device management platforms. This matters because the browser has become the primary attack vector in enterprise environments. More than half of surveyed organizations said they had been the victim of a browser-based attack or could have been in the last 12 months. Phishing led the incident types at 40%, followed by data loss or leakage at 38% and malicious browser extensions at 34%. Since most enterprise SaaS applications are browser-based, an unmanaged browser on a managed Mac represents a significant gap in security posture. The report recommends that IT teams treat the browser with the same level of scrutiny as the operating system itself, whether by locking down Safari through a device management platform, deploying a dedicated enterprise browser, or relying on secure cross-platform extensions.