Centrify Bolsters Samsung KNOX EMM

Samsung’s KNOX EMM (enterprise mobile management) offering is getting a boost from technology by Centrify and its identity and access management (IAM) service.

The two companies are working to better secure enterprise mobile devices. The agreement calls for Centrify to provide IAM as a subscription service within KNOX EMM, which is included on all Samsung devices. Centrify and Samsung will split the subscription revenue.

Shreyas Sadalgi, senior vice president of Business Development at Centrify, noted the agreement underscores the recognition by the enterprise to secure all points of the network.

“In the world of cloud and mobility, identity management has come to the forefront,” he said. “All applications, users and endpoints are now off-premises.

“Identity is becoming the new concept of perimeter security,” he added.

Centrify has been working with Samsung to power many of the core features of KNOX EMM, which Sadalgi said was built from the ground up and provides unified policy management. “It is unique to other vendors offering EMM: None of the others offers identity,” he said.

KNOX continues to battle Android’s (rightful) reputation of being less secure than Apple iOS or BlackBerry, Samsung’s biggest competitors in the enterprise space. But Samsung believes a more comprehensive KNOX EMM will change that, Sadalgi said.

“What’s happening is Apple devices are being accepted into the enterprise and Samsung wants to change that. Apple is riding the popularity wave in the enterprise—it’s winning because consumers like it and IT is grappling with having to add another layer of software to make it secure. That’s where Samsung is attempting to leapfrog,” he noted.

KNOX EMM service also supports non-Samsung devices, which makes the platform that much more attractive to heterogeneous mobile environments, he added.

It’s a fact that managing mobile devices in any-size corporate network sometimes is akin to herding cats—a lot of work with not a lot to show at the end of the day. Here’s hoping Samsung and Centrify can help corral some of the security issues associated with mobile devices over the corporate network.