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Hi everyone! Michael here from The Daily Note II/3 YouTube channel. Welcome to part 7 of
what's new on Android 4.3 for the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. This episode is all about Samsung
KNOX. So what is KNOX? It is a way or attempt at
a way to secure your sensitive data on your Android by giving you a way to store it in
a separate, password protected, and encrypted location.
So I'm going to go through install of KNOX on my Galaxy Note 2, show you what it looks
like, and show you the advantages and disadvantage of enabling KNOX on your device.
So first thing you must understand is, why something like KNOX is necessary on Android,
and why there hasn't been anything like it before. It is because the data on your Android
device is not totally secure. For example, say you have pattern unlock, or something
stronger like a password unlock. Well, your data is still vulnerable. A pattern unlock
will be a good deterrent for your data, if someone stole your phone primarily for the
hardware. They're not going to go out of their way to extract your data. After a few attempts
at unlocking your phone, they'll most likely just format your phone to use it as their
own. Now if someone stole your phone for the purposes of stealing your data on the device,
they can easily gain access to your files. Without getting into specific details, all
they would need to do is flash a custom bootloader to be able to pull files off the device with
a PC. Next thing wanted to address is, can KNOX
be useful for non-business users? So while doing research on Samsung KNOX, I was trying
to think of how people can use Samsung KNOX to their advantage.
Maybe people can use KNOX to actually loosen security by letting people set swipe unlock
to gain access to things like lock screen widgets and some hands free functionality,
which you are restricted to when you have any kind of secured lock screen. And you can
still password protect your private data such as emails, browsing history, and photos inside
KNOX. Or maybe you can use KNOX because you give
people access to your phone regularly, and although they might not be looking to snoop
on your data, you don't necessarily want to leave the door wide open for them to access
private data when you're away from the device. Well, for those 2 examples I just gave, I've
concluded that it is going to be more trouble than it's worth. There are just too many limitations
where you probably won't be using KNOX for long.
However, if your company or department requires you to secure your data, such as emails, documents,
and other sensitive information with certain security measures, and your company does everything
with it's own email server, or even better, an Exchange server, that's where KNOX is going
to be something you're going to want to use, despite the minor additional inconvenience
in the name of security. So let's install it. It's going to take some
room on your Android. Approximately 200MB worth. You're going to need to set passwords
obviously. This is the password you'll need to enter whenever you go inside KNOX. Good
thing is, to make it less of a hassle, you can set timeouts so you don't need to enter
it every time. Only when you haven't touched your device for a while, like 10 minutes,
which is the default timeout for having to enter your password, when you try to go inside
KNOX.
So here is KNOX. Let's first change that drab background. You'll notice that the background
selections are different. This definitely looks better.
One thing you'll notice right away is the limited amount of apps, and how they all have
that KNOX symbol on the bottom of the icon. It is because for an app to run in the KNOX
secured space, the app must be certified as a KNOX app. Which means you can't just install
an app from the Google Play store. And any app you want to install has to come from the
Samsung KNOX App store. And right now the amount of apps available is pretty limited
to say the least. Some apps here worth mentioning. Evernote. Kingsoft Office for your word documents.
Various apps for reading and filling PDF files. Many apps for remote desktop. You can see
how they all relate to business. The number of apps available may be limited,
but it's not like you're looking to run a secure version of Angry Birds. You're probably
wanting to do email, web browsing, maybe download and read some secure documents. And you can
do all that. Where it falls short is if your business runs on Gmail and Google Calendar,
which most medium sized businesses don't, but if yours does, you're going to find some
limitations. At this moment, you can't use the Gmail app which I find is better than
the Stock Email app. You can use the Stock Email app to check your Gmail but it just
won't have the same features as the Gmail app. If you use Google Calendar, any changes
you make on S Planner inside KNOX won't appear on your Google calendar outside of KNOX. For
2 way syncing of your calendar items in KNOX, you'll need to be connected to an exchange
server. To read PDF documents, you can't use your favorite apps like Adobe Reader, but
you can still use Kingsoft office. And one more feature worth mentioning. Say you take
pictures for work that you don't want to mix with your personal pictures outside of KNOX,
you can do that here. So there you go. If you decide KNOX is not
for you, can uninstall it by going to menu -> KNOX settings -> About KNOX -> Uninstall.
So that's KNOX in a nutshell. It's a new concept in Android. It has a lot of potential, and
depending on your needs, it may work for you as is. Or KNOX may be something that may need
to mature before it can meet the needs for business security and your requirement for
productivity when working with secure data. That's it for today. Make sure you check out
the other videos on this series and this channel. And make sure to subscribe for more upcoming
videos. And once again, thank you for watching.