Samsung’s Knox software is a version of Google’s Android with added security features.
Samsung’s smartphones have been best sellers all over the world, but the
company has been, until recently, marketing them to consumers, not
businesses.
But over the last year, Samsung, the South Korean manufacturer, has been quietly beefing up the Google Android software that runs on its smartphones to give businesses a phone with more security.
It introduced that software, named Knox, as in the fort, at an
international cellphone industry trade show here this week. Samsung said
its new version of Android protected users from malware.
The company hopes that the new software makes Samsung smartphones
attractive to corporate information technology departments that worry
about the theft of sensitive corporate data by hackers. I.T. managers
have been among BlackBerry’s most loyal customers because of the
security BlackBerry built into its phones and the private communications
network it maintains.
Samsung said it teamed up with General Dynamics, a military contractor,
to ensure its phones met the strict security standards of government
agencies. Samsung executives have said Knox will first appear on a new
Galaxy smartphone in the second quarter. That phone is likely to be the
Galaxy S IV, which is expected to be introduced at an event in New York
on March 14.
The company has also been focusing more on businesses in its
advertisements. It ran a series of amusing commercials during the
Academy Awards show on Sunday featuring the phones’ handiness in a
business.Samsung said it had evidence that it was ready for enterprise.
Thousands of its Galaxy smartphones and tablets are already in the hands
of American Airlines flight attendants, Dish Network cable technicians
and Boston Scientific health care professionals.
“We will become No. 1 in enterprise,” said Tim Wagner, a vice president
for enterprise sales at Samsung who worked at BlackBerry. “If Samsung
chooses to be No. 1 in a certain area, we will become No. 1.”
Samsung has become the top seller of televisions and cellphones, but
persuading I.T. managers to risk their jobs on a new security system
will be tricky. BlackBerry executives insist the BlackBerry is still the
top phone for professionals. But the company is vulnerable. Android
phones and Apple iPhones last year replaced BlackBerrys as the most-used
phones among workers all over the world, according to a study by the
research firm IDC.
It found that more businesses were buying iPhones for their employees,
and Android phones were the most popular among workers buying their own
phones. That puts Samsung, as the leading Android phone maker, in
position to become a top vendor for businesses.
To appeal to the business user, Samsung added special features to
Android. One tool allows the phone owner to create separate “personas”
for personal and business use, a feature also on the new BlackBerry 10.
In a phone’s business persona, an office worker can use apps approved
and monitored by the I.T. department. The worker can switch to a
personal persona, where personal photos, games and calendar are stored,
which cannot be seen by I.T. If the employee were to leave the company
and keep the phone, the I.T manager can erase the data from the business
persona, leaving the personal data untouched.
The business persona also has a layer of security. If malware were to
infect the phone, it would not be able to invade the apps and data in
the business persona, said Rhee Injong, a senior vice president for the
Samsung group that developed Knox.
Samsung also has teamed up with AirWatch,
a company that makes tools for I.T. professionals to manage phones.
AirWatch will make detailed tweaks inside the business persona of a
Samsung device, like creating restrictions for Wi-Fi networks or
blacklisting certain apps.
John Marshall, chief executive of AirWatch, said that the benefit of
Samsung’s openness was that businesses could tailor their phone’s
software and also better manage the corporate fleet of phones. He said
that because BlackBerry made its own I.T. management software, its
flexibility was limited. BlackBerry, however, said that its approach
offered higher and more consistent levels of securit
No comments:
Post a Comment