Samsung Announces Worldwide Commercial Availability of KNOX™ 2.0 on Galaxy S5

Seoul, May 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Electronics announced the global availability of KNOX 2.0, the company’s end-to-end secure mobile platform designed to provide advanced data and privacy protection for enterprise users. It provides better support for IT departments looking for reassurance and convenience as they implement and manage their Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies.

The Samsung KNOX platform is no longer one product but represents a portfolio of multiple products and services designed to better meet the rapidly evolving enterprise mobility needs of customers. As a result, the original product launched in 2013 as Samsung KNOX – the core security platform and app container –has now been renamed KNOX Workspace. Announced at MWC 2014, KNOX 2.0 includes KNOX Workspace, EMM, Marketplace and Customization.

KNOX Workspace is currently available on the newly launched Samsung Galaxy S5, which can be activated by IT managers for later use. KNOX 2.0 will be available on other Samsung Galaxy devices through OS upgrades in the coming months. The MDM previously used with KNOX 1.0 is also fully compatible with KNOX 2.0. The workspace users of KNOX 1.0 will be automatically migrated to that of KNOX 2.0 with the OS upgrade.

“KNOX has been widely deployed by enterprises since it became first commercially available in the market in September 2013,” said JK Shin, President and CEO, Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division, Samsung Electronics. “As a result of this rapid adoption, we needed to evolve the Samsung KNOX platform to directly address the ever-changing needs of the enterprise as we demonstrate our commitment to protect and respond to future enterprise mobility and security challenges.”

New and evolved features for the KNOX 2.0 platform include:

· Cutting-edge Core Platform Security: As it evolves to be the most secure Android platform, KNOX Workspace offers a series of core security enhancements to better protect device integrity from kernel to apps. These upgraded features include TrustZone-Protected Certificate Management, KNOX Key Store, Real-Time Protection for System Integrity, TrustZone-Protected ODE, Two-factor Biometric Authentication and the Enhanced Generic Framework of KNOX.

· Improved User Experience: KNOX Workspace provides an enhanced user experience with new features for its container for a more flexible approach for enterprise deployment.

o The KNOX container provides users with enhanced features such as support for all Android apps from the Google Play Store, meaning there is no need to go through the app wrapping process for third-party apps.

o Third-party container support provides a better policy control compared to the Native SE for Android, allowing the user or IT manager to choose their preferred container.

o Split-Billing works with carriers to separately calculate the bills for personal-use apps and professional-use apps and in turn bills the company for all enterprise or professional app use.

o Universal MDM Client (UMC) and Samsung Enterprise Gateway(SEG) make user enrollment process simpler than before since the user profile is pre-registered to SEG by MDM servers.

· Expanding Ecosystem: In addition to the core features of KNOX 2.0, brought by KNOX Workspace, users will also enjoy access to two new cloud based services, KNOX EMM and KNOX Marketplace, and a customization service, KNOX Customization. These broaden the KNOX 2.0 customer base by catering specifically to SMBs.

o KNOX EMM provides cloud-based Mobile Device Management and Identity and Access Management (SSO + Directory service) with a rich set of IT policies to implement company guidelines.

o KNOX Marketplace is one stop shop for SMBs to find, buy and use KNOX and enterprise cloud apps in a unified environment.

o KNOX Customization offers a groundbreaking way to create highly customized B2B solutions with off-the-shelf hardware by providing either SDK or Binary to Systems Integrators(SI).

Source: Samsung Electronics