Securing your Local Admin account with Password Randomisation

Bart Reardon, CSIRO Part of XW18

Creating a known local admin account across all managed devices is a common way to ensure that when the worst happens, you have a way to service a clients Mac.

Whether its 10 or 1000 devices though, keeping track of local admin passwords can be problematic and the usual outcome is all machine have the same account name and the same password, creating a security problem if the password were to ever be leaked out and an administrative problem changing passwords on all your managed devices to something else.

Microsoft introduced the concept of the Local Administrator Password Solution, or LAPS for Active Directory bound Windows workstations. Individual randomised local administrator passwords for each device, stored in a secure location.

This session will explain how LAPS works in general and introduce some open source tools to achieve the same outcome for macOS for AD environments and other managed systems.


Bart has worked for the CSIRO in their IT department for over 16 years and is based in Canberra.

Bart currently works for CSIRO’s desktop infrastructure team and leads development for the Mac and Linux Desktop SOE’s and manages 900 macOS workstations using Munki and other open source tools.

He has contributed to Munki and macOSLAPS open source projects.



Women of X World Breakfast Meetup

At this year’s X World, speaker Tania Dastres will be running a ‘Women of X World’ breakfast, as a chance for women attendees to get to know each other outside of the bustle of the conference crowd. If you would like to attend, and identify as a woman, please fill out this form by June 15th, and Tania will get back to you with further details.


Bash Programming for Beginners

Tony Williams Part of XW18

This workshop will start with understanding, setting up and using the command line before moving on to simple shell programming. Along the way we’ll cover the flow control and looping, command results, chaining commands, and regular expressions among other topics.

It is open to anyone with or without experience using the command line.

Attendees should bring a laptop along with macOS 10.12 or 10.13 installed and connected to the conference WiFi.


Tony is currently a systems engineer and responsible for managing over 9,000 iOS devices and 300 Macs. With over thirty five years in the industry he has had a myriad of roles including C programmer, Unix systems administrator, IT Manager, support specialist and Associate Editor of Australian Macworld. He has presented at X World a number of times including workshops on bash and python and presentations on using netBoot and DeployStudio and iOS programming.


An Introduction to Docker

Stuart Lamont Part of XW18

No doubt you’ve heard about Docker, but do you know what it is and how to leverage it for your needs?

In this Workshop, I’ll take you through some Docker Basics to get you up and running, figure out the difference between VM’s and containers, and give you some ideas for what to use it for in your environment.

In preparation for this workshop, delegates should install Docker Community Edition from: https://store.docker.com/search?type=edition&offering=community

It is also advisable that attendees be comfortable with working in command line.


Stuart is a Mac SysAdmin from Melbourne, with an interest in Automation and Simplification.


Quit Your Job – Learning from New Environments

Peter Wells, Swinburne University Part of XW18

We all know how much we learn from this community, but the best way to learn is to go somewhere new, see what works that you never thought of, what is missing that you used to rely on. What I’ve learnt moving form universities, and why everyone here should quit their job.


Peter Wells is Mac Sys Admin and technology commentator, currently working with Swinburne University, and writing for The Age and  Sydney Morning Herald. He was the former weekend host for  The Daily Tech News Show, and the Reckoner Australia podcast, and was previously the front page editor for MacTalk, Australia’s largest Apple Community.

This is Peter’s third time speaking at X World. He has previously spoken at its sister AUC conferences /dev/world and CreateWorld, as well as South By Southwest, Ad:Tech, Swipe Conference, and was MC at One More Thing.


Loan iPads

Carrie Irvine, NorthTec Part of XW18

With budget constraints looming we couldn’t justify additional spend on iPads, so we looked for a better way to utilise the devices we already had.  iPads which had lived for years in under-utilised carts were brought home to our Service Desk where we developed a centralised pool of loan iPads maintained using Jamf Pro, DEP & VPP.


As part NorthTec’s Desktop Support & Quality Learning teams Carrie has been configuring and supporting Apple devices in a predominantly Windows environment since 2012. Carrie’s passion lies in automation, facilitating improvements to the user experience and supporting ongoing research into adoption of emerging technologies to improve student outcomes.


Pro Jamf Pro

Jon Rhoades, St Vincent’s Institute Part of XW18

SVI switched from using the “munki stack” to Jamf 18 months ago. The munki stack is a collection of open source tools with munki at the centre that provide a comprehensive Mac management ecosystem.

When we moved to Jamf, we found that Jamf Pro provides for most but not all of our needs.

This talk aims to cover the additional applications we’ve needed to manage our Macs and iOS devices and the tools required to setup and manage our Mac and iOS environment.

We will be looking at how we setup, manage and monitor the Jamf Pro Server. How we can interface Jamf Pro with other business applications we run. We will also look at tools we can use to interface with Jamf Pro to help us add & manage applications and users.


Jon is currently the IT Manager at St Vincent’s Institute – a medical research institute in Melbourne affiliated with the University of Melbourne.


Dreaming of a Tech-Free Deployment Workflow

Tania Dastres, Seek Ltd Part of XW18

Apple’s DEP has allowed us to envision a tech-free deployment workflow. It has enabled us to dream of fast Apple to end user roll-outs, customers revelling in the delight of unboxing a new Mac, and Macs configured in a consistent and timely manner regardless of where our end-users are located or what our tech team availability is like.

This presentation will take you through the considerations and challenges encountered on the journey to ultimate Apple Admin utopia.


Tania Dastres has worked in IT for more than 12 years, all of which have been in Apple support. She started providing Tier 1 AppleCare Support for Apple, worked as an Apple Technician at RMIT for 9 years, and now works at SEEK, as an Apple System Administrator.

She is a wannabe programmer, and will search for any excuse to use Swift at work.


Making the World Accessible: Accessibility on MacOS and iOS

Lucy Mathis, Google LLC Part of XW18

Have you ever asked yourself, “What if one day I break my arm and I can’t create the best memes or sift through all those lines of code to find that missing semicolon?” Well, luckily, Apple has your back. Including recently becoming the industry leader in Accessibility emojis, the fruit giant™’s operating systems have consistently been the most accessible across the board. From the best built-in dictation software to enabling an accessibility keyboard based on your needs, we will explore all the features macOS and iOS have to offer to those who are in need and even those who want to compose emails just a little bit faster.

You will learn how to use accessibility features like VoiceOver for basic tasks, and how to tailor your products for those in need.

It is suggested delegates attending this session have earbuds or headphones compatible with their devices to get the most out of this session.


Currently, Lucy is an IT Resident at Google, as well as an OS X subject matter expert. She has worked closely with the core Google Mac Platform Hardening team since May 2015, including an in-depth, quarter-long rotation where she worked on their tools, including Santa. In addition to being a Mac SME, Lucy also works on Google’s accessibility team, centered around making internal tools more accessible.