BARCELONA - Samsung wants to kill the last BlackBerry. With its new Knox corporate security software, Samsung is hardening its phones so they meet even intense Defense Department standards. That puts Samsung in place to mop up the last BlackBerry stalwarts and to face down iPhones in the "bring your own device" sweepstakes in business.
"Samsung Knox is a comprehensive mobile security solution. The intent is for Knox to be the most comprehensive," said Tim Wagner, Samsung's vice president of enterprise mobile sales.
Business Behind Walls
Aside from its fearsome list of qualifications (US DoD CAC/PIV and FIPS 140-2 are on the list, as well as other things that mostly make sense to financial, legal, and medical IT directors), Knox gives Samsung phones a corporate controlled "container," much like BlackBerry's new BlackBerry Balance function.
A Samsung phone with Knox will have a personal side and a business side. Corporate IT managers will be able to control the data and applications within the business container, but won't be able to see or touch the personal side. Users will flip between the two sides using an icon in an on-screen shortcut bar.
"Your text messages aren't visible to the IT department, and vice versa," Wagner said. "Having the container allows corporate IT to fully support a device from Samsung; if you leave the company, they just remove the container portion of the device," he said.
Knox phones will work with Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange, as well as with a half-dozen mobile device management systems. Samsung will support the major U.S. wireless carriers' preferred device management systems, so the carriers can help businesses install and run the management systems, Wagner said. VPN support will be extensive enough that it can be controlled on an application by application level.
Under the hood, Knox is "hardened" by running an NSA-developed build of Android called Security Enhanced Android, Wagner said. For more on that, check out our ExtremeTech story on SE Android.
Knox won't require special devices, Wagner said; it'll be built into Samsung's upcoming "iconic" Galaxy devices. Somehow, all these security enhancements won't prevent Android updates either, he said.
All Business, No Keyboards
Back in 2008, we wrote a lot about how then-new President Obama was addicted to his BlackBerry. Would the government force him to give it up and get a secure handheld from General Dynamics instead? The Commander-in-Chief won out in the end, and he was frequently photographed with a BlackBerry 8800 at public appearances.
Samsung's Knox system may make the company's upcoming phones POTUS-ready. But they're still missing one key BlackBerry aspect that business users (as well as Obama himself) have loved in the past: that hardware keyboard. While Samsung offers a few midrange smartphones with hardware keyboards like the Stratosphere II on Verizon, it doesn't have an "iconic" phone with a keyboard.
"There are folks who would want a QWERTY keyboard," Wagner acknowledged. "If there's a real need for a QWERTY keyboard in the near term, we will absolutely look at it."
Keyboards or no, Knox phones will start appearing around the world in the second quarter of this year.