Skip to main content

Surface Security iOS — Getting started

The Surface Security iOS app mirrors the web alerts experience and pages on-call analysts with push notifications. It is intended for admin users on company-issued iPhones.

Install

  1. Install Surface Security from the App Store.
  2. Launch the app. The onboarding screen asks for your server URL and tenant slug — your security team will have these.
  3. The app probes your tenant to learn which login method to show (single sign-on, password, or both).

First login

  • If your company uses SSO, tap Continue with SSO — the system browser appears, you sign in the same way you do on the web.
  • Otherwise enter your email + password, and an MFA code if one is required.

Permissions you'll be asked for

On first launch, iOS prompts for:

  • Face ID or Touch ID — required to unlock the app on every open. You'll see this prompt when the app starts, when it's resumed from the background, or when you return from a notification. There is no "remember" option — this is a security requirement.
  • Notifications — to receive alert pages. Allow Alerts, Sounds, Badges, Critical Alerts so high-severity pages can break through Do Not Disturb.

If you deny any of these, the app still works but with reduced functionality (no paging, no content visibility).

What you can do on iOS

  • See alerts — list, filter by severity/status/type, view detail with screenshot, AI summary, and timeline.
  • Act on alerts — acknowledge, assign (to yourself or another admin), and resolve.
  • See on-call status — who is currently on call for each schedule, and your own upcoming shifts.
  • See triage metrics — today/week/month MTTA, MTTR, ack and resolve rates.

What you cannot do on iOS (use the web for these)

  • Edit on-call schedules or overrides.
  • Edit push rules.
  • Reopen resolved alerts, change severity, or generate unblock keys.

Tap Open in dashboard on any alert detail to jump to the web.