Samsung Knox 2.0 taps fingerprint verification, ties in Good Technology

As the mania from the Galaxy S5 unveiling winds down, Samsung moved forward with its enterprise portfolio announcements during the second full day of Mobile World Congress 2014.

Introduced at last year's show in Barcelona, Samsung Knox launched commercially in October 2013 as the tech giant's strategy for serving the enterprise world amid the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) wave.

Since then, Knox has Samsung has sold over 25 million devices running Knox, with more than one million active users on the platform.

Samsung also revealed this week that it sees 210,000 Knox-enabled devices each month, translating to an average of approximately 7,000 devices each day.

Thus, with a new slew of Galaxy mobile devices on the way, so to is the next version of Knox.

Knox 2.0 taps into a number of the advancements baked into the new Galaxy S5. One example is two-factor biometric authentication, which requires both password and fingerprint verification to unlock.

Other new features include a 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.

Samsung is also aiming to make the next edition of Knox more flexible for IT and end users alike, starting with new cloud-based mobile device management services as well as the Knox Marketplace for listing and buying enterprise apps.

Knox 2.0 also sports a dual access point network (APN) function that can charge the data traffic usage of business apps from personal ones.

The Seoul-headquartered corporation is working to shore up security for most Android apps available via Google Play, highlighting a deal with Good Technology for optimized support of its secure container.

Essentially, Samsung mobile devices with Knox will have a "Good Secure Domain" in which users 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 is slated to roll out during the second quarter. Note that current Knox users will need to upgrade their devices to Android 4.4 (a.k.a. KitKat) before getting the newest version of Knox.

Knox 2.0 will be pre-installed on the Samsung Galaxy S5.