Samsung’s Knox 2.0 brings new security features for enterprise

Samsung’s Knox product may not be particularly well known outside enterprise IT circles, but the product is now just one year old, and received a major update at the recent Mobile World Congress.

For those who don’t really know too much about it, Samsung Knox is basically a mobile security platform designed mainly for enterprise which allows business and personal apps/data to co-exist in the same handset, while maintaining the security of the business information and ensuring it can’t be inappropriately used or accessed, all the while protecting both sets of data against security risks. This is just a brief summary, and we couldn’t explain it as well as Samsung can in their own material.

The Knox platform has been enhanced with a couple of new features at MWC. The headline feature is biometrics, which — when paired with the new Samsung Galaxy S5 — can allow users to access secure information using two-factor authentication, pairing a fingerprint with a passcode. This allows security administrators to ensure that only those presenting the correct fingerprint and passcode can access certain systems or applications.

Another feature, which really should be considered a growing compatibility more than anything else, is that Knox will now allow users to run most Google Play applications without setting up a new environment. This will allow Knox to secure apps and data and prevent unauthorised editing of and access to system partitions and other sensitive data.

Last but not least, Samsung will establish a Knox marketplace where IT staff can set up deploy applications across all users’ phones. Some big names like Box and GoTo Meeting are already on board.

Samsung Knox requires Android 4.4, and will launch with the Samsung Galaxy S5, with other handsets to follow.