During last year’s Mobile World Congress, Samsung unveiled its first Knox solution to make it more secure for enterprise and government customers to use Sammy-made devices and implement BYOD policies. Now the Korean company is out with Knox 2.0 that adds a number of new features to the mix, including:
- Two-factor biometric authentication that requires both password and fingerprint verification to unlock (that’s why the Galaxy S5 has a fingerprint reader).
- Knox Key Store for generating and managing encryption keys inside the TrustZone protected environment as well as real-time monitoring to prevent unauthorized edits to kernel code, critical kernel data and system partitions.
- Support for cloud-based mobile device management (MDM) services.
- Knox Marketplace for listing and buying (approved) enterprise apps.
- Dual APN (Access Point Network) function that can charge the data traffic usage of business apps from personal ones.
In addition, Samsung is also working with partners such as Good Technology for optimized support of its secure container. This in turn will allow Knox users to have a “Good Secure Domain” where they can deploy Good’s mobile app ecosystem and app-level security while leveraging Knox’s security at the Android operating system and hardware levels. Other third-party containers with the same levels of protection and support on Knox include Fixmo’s SafeZone and MobileIron’s AppConnect.
Knox 2.0 will start rolling out at some point in the second quarter of the year, requiring devices with Android 4.4 KitKat. It will come preloaded with the new Galaxy S5.
Samsung has sold over 25 million devices running Knox, with more than one million active users on the platform. Some 210,000 Knox-enabled devices are sold every month.
[Via: ZDnet]