AirWatch, MobileIron, SOTI Pledge Support for Samsung KNOX

Mobile device management vendors are piling on to support Samsung's end-to-end mobility security solution for BYOD, KNOX, announced this week at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Among those that have already announced support are AirWatch, SOTI and MobileIron. Plus KNOX's APIs for MDM make it easy for other providers to support the technology as well. Here's the scoop.

Samsung KNOX was designed to provide security hardening from the hardware through to the application layer. The company designed the platform to provide full compatibility with Android and the Google ecosystem, while engineering fundamental security and management enhancements, which includes its application container technology, enabling enterprises to support both bring your own device (BYOD) and corporate-liable models without compromising corporate security or employee privacy. AirWatch implemented its Samsung SAFE features to assist enterprises and government institutions to do the following:

“Samsung KNOX is a significant step in enterprise readiness for Android and allows businesses and government institutions to adopt new mobile device types with enterprise-grade security into their mobile ecosystems,” said AirWatch President and CEO John Marshall. “AirWatch delivers the flexibility to implement and manage diverse mobile operating systems and platform iterations through strong OEM integration. Samsung SAFE and KNOX management support provide our customers additional options to protect personal data while ensuring corporate data loss prevention, especially for BYOD programs.”

For its part, SOTI says that its MobiControl MDM product leverages Samsung KNOX to deliver a solution that lets IT manage corporate data within KNOX containers via an easy to use management console and features including anti-virus configuration, category-based web filtering, email policies, document management and location based management.

Meanwhile, Mobile Iron CEO Bob Tinker said that KNOX is a big step forward in establishing Android as a core computing platform for business. “What distinguishes KNOX is Samsung's commitment to meeting and exceeding the security needs of the most exacting enterprise and government organizations. Our customers are very excited to trial and deploy the KNOX,” he added. <

Network security solutions provider ForeScout Technologies, Inc. and AirWatch announced a partnership recently to deliver a mobile security solution that combined ForeScout’s network access control (NAC) offerings with AirWatch’s MDM solution for iOS and Android mobile management. Both companies expect this alliance will quickly enable enterprise mobility and bring your own device (BYOD) strategies.