Mac os secure setup question

[tauntaunsoup]

Hi all.
I have a iMac that I use for my freelance design business from home.
I have an upcoming contract with a design agency that requires me to grant their IT company access to my iMac in order to install some necessary software. How do I ensure I can grant them admin access while also protecting my existing client files from prying eyes? Is it as simple as creating a new user account or do I need to do more?
iMac 27", 3.6GHz Core i9, 40GB Ram, MacOS Big Sur.
Thanks

 

[Jigs]

I hate clicking on questions that I too have, but there are no answers! So here is what I would say, but what do I know, Im just a veteran mac user with constant questions about security. I think I would just dedicate a device, like a MacBookPro M1 to that client, and let them have at it, but don't put in your real details unless absolutely needed. As in get a different .icloud account, why not, it's almost free.

Separate users accounts on the same machine provide little security IMO and besides, if clients software goes belly up when/if u move to Monty, what happens after it drags ur entire system down, including your private account? Ewww.

 

[echan]

If you don't have a separate machine for them to use as the suggestion above, another alternative would be to install a virtual environment (Parallels, Virtualbox, VMWare) and let the IT company have access to that for installing their software. This way when you're done with the contract and you've backed up your work, you can simply toss the encapsulated environment and not have to worry about the junk that they've installed and possibly screwing up your OS for your other contracts/company work that you do.

Alternatively, if you don't mind uninstalling all their stuff manually and only want to ensure the privacy of your other client files, you can protect them with some encryption applications so that the data is inaccessible/unusable until it's decrypted by you first.

 

[Harry Trent]

The encryption idea would seem to be the way to go to me.

 

[Jigs]

If you don't have a separate machine for them to use as the suggestion above, another alternative would be to install a virtual environment (Parallels, Virtualbox, VMWare) and let the IT company have access to that for installing their software. This way when you're done with the contract and you've backed up your work, you can simply toss the encapsulated environment and not have to worry about the junk that they've installed and possibly screwing up your OS for your other contracts/company work that you do.

Alternatively, if you don't mind uninstalling all their stuff manually and only want to ensure the privacy of your other client files, you can protect them with some encryption applications so that the data is inaccessible/unusable until it's decrypted by you first.

ha, that is exactly what I used to do before I retired... interesting that I forgot. Parallels all the way, then I just archived the VM file onto a portable drive, for safekeeping and blew away the work on my personal machine. The one consideration was I always had to have a huge internal SSD to make that work, as some of the client's VMs were over 100GB each. PD creates huge files, and is too damn slow to run off externals, unless perhaps if u ran off an SSD stick via thunderbolt.

Another consideration if your on an M1... things get ugly if you have to run a Windows VM. Then you have to have the ARM version of that. And then some apps may not even run in that space. But that's ms windows, best to avoid

 

[echan]

another thought: if they're big enough to have an IT department that wants to install software...why don't you just inquire if they have any preconfigured laptops/desktops that you can utilize for the work that they want you to work on. I've often done this for contractors for my company...

 

[tauntaunsoup]

Thanks for the responses all. really appreciate it. I'll look into some sort of virtual environment as a solution.
I could use one of their machines but they are all old and I have my system set up how I like it and don't want to be swapping iMacs at the end of each day.