Samsung releases KNOX 2.0 for the Galaxy S5 for enterprise customers

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 7 May 2014

Samsung-KNOX-at-MWC-2014

At MWC, Samsung not only announced the Galaxy S5 but also unveiled a major upgrade for its enterprise security solution — KNOX. Today, the company announced that its latest security suite is finally ready to be deployed on the Galaxy S5.

KNOX 2.0 is a radical revamp of the platform and is now a complete security suite that offers a bunch of advanced features like KNOX Workspace, EMM, Marketplace and Customisation. In comparison, KNOX 1.0 was just a core security platform and an app container. 

On the Galaxy S5, KNOX 2.0 will also make use of the phone’s fingerprint sensor to deliver enhanced security.

“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.” 

This time though, Samsung has not pre-loaded KNOX 2.0 on the Galaxy S5, which ended up creating a big problem for all the previous Galaxy owners. Instead, if a Galaxy S5 owner needs to activate KNOX 2.0 on their device, they will have to contact their IT department.

Samsung also plans on bringing KNOX 2.0 to other Galaxy devices via a future software update down the line.