In our reviews for the new midrange phones from Samsung, Galaxy A35 and Galaxy A55, both I and Cătălin mentioned that one of the big news this year is Knox certification. More precisely, the slightly more affordable phones of the South Korean manufacturer now benefit from the same protection that the flagships have had for several years. You will know this as soon as you turn on the new phone, when the phrase “Secured by Knox” appears on the screen. But what does this mean and what effect does it have on us, the everyday users? Well, that’s what we try to discern and find out in the following lines.
I also mentioned in the review for the Galaxy A35 that Knox is a very interesting choice from Samsung for the new midranges, mainly because its major benefits are not visible, only felt. Ordinary users don’t know much about Knox and how it works, but the association with Fort Knox, the best guarded place in the world, is not accidental.
Knox is meant to protect your phone against cyber attacks and more. Phones that have this certification, “Secured by Knox”, basically start with a processor that already has integrated security elements, which means that data protection is taken into account from the design stage. We also recently spoke on our show on Prima TV (connect, every Saturday from 11:30 and rerun on Sundays from 10:30) about how cyber threats have constantly changed in recent years and become more able to adapt to protection methods like never before. With the evolution of artificial intelligence, we also expect such attacks to evolve in turn and become increasingly powerful and difficult to remove. Sure, you can say “this doesn’t happen to me, it doesn’t have any data to steal, I’m careful what I click on anyway”, but it’s never like that. No matter how prepared you are to detect a threat, such as a fake email or SMS, there will always be the possibility of not paying attention when you receive it, and clicking on it without realizing it. The old grammatical mistakes in emails like “Your package has arrived, send us 10 euros to receive it” are rarely found anymore, as translation apps and LLMs like ChatGPT are increasingly more used and more advanced.
That’s why it’s good to have a device as protected as possible, especially in a midrange area where this aspect is not always taken into account by manufacturers. Samsung is one of the few that includes this type of protection directly in the hardware, and does not rely only on software solutions. The so-called “Knox safe” has the role of keeping your passwords, PIN or pattern directly in the most secure part of the phone’s storage memory. Not only that, but if it detects that your phone has been hacked and someone tries to find out your card PIN or banking app password, it will automatically shut down, giving the attacker no time to get that data. Also for the same purpose, Samsung integrates something called RKP, i.e. Real-time Kernel Protection. The kernel is basically the brain of the phone, which, once accessed, allows an attacker to see all the data on your device. Think of it like that giant screen in action movies where you see all the surveillance cameras in a building. Of course, as you probably guess from the name, it is protected in real time to react immediately to any type of attack. In addition, Knox Vault is also certified by the CCTL (Common Criteria Testing Laboratory) with the EAL5+ level (a level that indicates greater confidence in a security system).
Knox also includes a very interesting feature that has a pretty cool name – AutoBlocker. With this, your phone detects and anticipates a cyber attack – for example, when your phone has a virus that tries to change an app’s permissions to access data like your photos or contact numbers, this feature should notice that and stop immediately the attack. It can also protect you against physical attacks on the device, a very useful thing when you are for example in an airport and someone might have such access to your phone.
Samsung has also signed partnerships with Google or Cisco, also to certify the safety of its phones. For example, our partnership with Google includes all of Android’s security features and app store protection to help you avoid downloading anything that could put your data at risk. With Cisco, Samsung is working on security for when you’re using a public wireless network. So when you’re in an airport or a coffee shop, it increases the risk of a cyberattack, but Knox includes a feature called OpenRoaming. This ensures the encryption of the connection, and should at least in theory give you a bit more peace of mind the next time you try to connect to the Wi-Fi in Henri Coandă.
So Knox does quite a few things for your phone, even if you don’t really see them. In fact, about the most direct connection to Knox you can have is in the Secure Folder, a special place in Samsung phones where you can “hide” important files, documents, photos or other things you want to keep safe.
However, the situation changes when we talk about businesses, because here Knox becomes not just a thing nice to have, as it is for regular users, but a real need. Employee device security should be paramount for any business, and whether it’s Knox or another security solution, it must be there. And this is rather where I think Samsung was aiming when it decided to introduce Knox Vault on its midrange phones, because they can be bought by a company in large quantities, to be used by employees, and alongside them, because now they have internal Knox architecture, Knox Guard can be used, which is a Samsung service that ensures the protection of a company’s phones, based on a commercial license purchased from an authorized Samsung distributor. Samsung itself says who this service is recommended for – carriers or other device resellers, insurance companies that offer protection against theft or loss of a phone, or any organization that wants to have more security on its gadgets.
And there’s a lot more going on here than with single users, and Knox is starting to look like a veritable fortress configurable by those who want to use it. That means you can choose the features you want to integrate on employees’ phones, things like notifications, blocking certain connections, including NFC or Bluetooth, if the phone is lost or stolen, and even, in some extreme cases, the ability to completely reset phones from a distance. And all this can be seen from the Knox Guard console, which you can only access with Samsung’s approval. So yes, it can be said that Knox is something more than a simple application for monitoring and securing a company’s devices.
In the previous articles about Knox we were talking about a very simple example, that of making the company phone a company phone only, that is, without having the ability to download games, social media or streaming applications or other things on it. Well, things don’t just stop there, because Samsung has evolved a lot with its security system, and it now feels more complex than ever. It can be used in companies, classrooms and many other places, and allows for a lot of configuration options.
Material made with the support of Samsung Romania.
