Opportunity Knox: More secure, zero-touch enrollment

Sponsored By: Samsung

Think about how IT professionals used to set up and assemble computers: they configured hardware, booted machines, and when prompted, installed the OS and other software. Now, try to imagine manufacturers today shipping their devices with a slip of paper instructing IT professionals to plug in devices, boot them up, and install the OS and software.

End users and IT administrators have come to expect that certain “menial” tasks will be done for them. Like any enterprise on a digital journey, today’s government offices seek to provide IT administrators with the best possible experience, especially when it comes to configuring and deploying mobile devices.

Zero-touch enrollment and configuration
The process of enrolling an Android device into a company’s EMM system typically involves a user downloading the agent application from the Google Play store and then authenticating it. All too often, the user, facing prompts, privacy policies, and license agreements, run into difficulties and end up calling the help desk. Result: a poor, inefficient experience and an IT headache.

Samsung KNOX was tailor-made for organizations with a time problem: spending too much time walking employees through every step of the device enrollment process; having a help desk to make sure employees can get their devices set up and enrolled in their mobile device management (MDM) program; and having to manually configure every single device.

Creating a superb user experience is achieved by keeping user intervention to a minimum. That means what can be pre-installed on devices is pre-installed, and standard settings are applied automatically.

The KNOX platform offers a simplified enrollment solution for supported EMMs that’s streamlined, intuitive, and eliminates steps and human error potential. KNOX Enrollment makes it possible for IT administrators to enroll hundreds, even thousands, of mobile devices into their enterprise EMM at the same time.

Installation and configuration is pushed to all devices belonging to a specific EMM profile. End users have only to turn on their new device, and connect to the Internet, and mobile enrollment takes care of the rest. This amounts to a standardized and very secure enrollment, one that minimizes end user interaction and allows organizations to get all its connected devices under one control.

Security assurance
According to the Ponemon Institute report “The State of Endpoint Security Risk in 2017,” seven out of 10 organizations reported an increase in their endpoint security risk. Meanwhile, less than one-third of organizations said they have faith in antivirus to stop the attacks they are seeing. The study concluded that, in order to reduce endpoint risk in 2018, organizations must move beyond traditional AV, invest in protection against fileless attacks, reduce endpoint management complexity, and focus on prevention.

The KNOX platform, installed to every Samsung device at the manufacturing stage, contains overlapping defense and security mechanisms that help protect against intrusion, malware, and even more malicious security threats. KNOX offers defense-grade security right out of the box, with all critical security mechanisms anchored at the device chipset level.

In April 2016, Samsung KNOX received the most “Strong” ratings of any mobile security platform in the Gartner Inc. report “Mobile Device Security: A Comparison of Platforms.” This report compares the core OS security features built into 12 mobile device platforms as well as enterprise management capabilities.

The right solution
Samsung is a trusted mobile device partner to governments globally. In addition to the Canadian Federal government, 29 governments worldwide have approved Samsung devices with Knox for employee use.

For a full list of Samsung KNOX certifications, visit the Samsung website.

KNOX Mobile Enrollment is for organizations seeking a streamlined enrollment experience. Learn more by visiting the Samsung Knox website.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Sponsored By: Samsung

Glenn Weir
Glenn Weir
Content writer at IT World Canada. Book lover. Futurist. Sports nut. Once and future author. Would-be intellect. Irish-born, Canadian-raised.