Delivering on a partnership that was first announced in February this year, identity services provider Centrify has integrated its cloud-based mobile device management platform with Samsung Knox. The manufacturer’s end-point security solution utilizes containerization to separate corporate data from personal data, making it practically impossible for users (and nosy admins) to gain unauthorized access to information.

With Centrify for Samsung KNOX, companies can plug their BYOD environments into an Active Directory and enforce policies using the phone maker’s SAFE line of enterprise security products. The feature also delivers single sign-on, or SSO, to make it easier for workers to access multiple mobile applications and cloud services.

Tom Kemp, the chief executive officer of Centrify, said that “together with Samsung, we are enabling IT to confidently embrace BYOD models for improved production, without sacrificing security or manageability. This is the first delivery of many rollouts we expect from the Samsung and Centrify partnership, delivering Centrify’s mobile security and role-based policy management to Samsung’s growing global customer base.”

Partners are key to Mobile Security-as-a-Service

This isn’t the first time Samsung’s partnered with a software provider to ease the enterprise’s transition to BYOD.  A few months ago, Samsung revealed that it has teamed up with Absolute Security to embed the firmware vendor’s patented persistence technology into Knox. The software promises to deliver a “constant, tamper-proof security connection for tracking, wiping, recovery and IT servicing” on Android devices.

Mobile security is becoming increasingly important for enterprises as workers continue to bring their own devices their work. Known as BYOD, this growing phenomenon is creating new opportunities for companies like Facebook. SiliconANGLE’s Ryan Cox believes that the social networking giant’s “ability to build a business model around our private data” makes it uniquely positioned to deliver a Mobile Security-as-a-Service platform. Cox theorizes that Facebook could go after the rapidly growing device management and mobile payment markets with an on-demand solution that would complement Facebook Home.

The need for third parties, automation

Key to Facebook’s strategy would be the consumer, which is central to any BYOD solution.  There’s a broad opportunity here to secure mobile for the enterprise, but it will take cooperation from manufacturers, software makers and service providers alike.  Even Samsung can’t address all the security issues that arise with BYOD solutions, reiterating the importance of third-party partners to fill in the gaps.

“Samsung has provided support within their platform for all the security controls and policy enforcement that our customers have been asking for,” says Centrify’s Senior Director of Product Management David McNeely. “Obviously, Since Centrify has provided the Zero Sign-On capabilities that Samsung required within their container, we’d certainly like to get this same solution into other platforms since many others have been embedding other technologies such as Per App VPN and FIPS validated encryption for data at rest.”

Also key to the proper implementation of  Centrify’s software solutions is automation, further easing the transition for IT admin and users alike.  For Centrify, leveraging existing software aids in that automation.

“Centrify has built mobile security management as an extension of existing enterprise tool sets such as Active Directory Users and Computers as well as Group Policy Management Console so that security policies can be applied automatically,” McNeely explains.

“The advantage is that most IT organizations already know how to use these tools to manage security policies and any policy defined for devices or users within a given container in Active Directory will be applied automatically upon registration of a device. Changes are also automatically applied across all devices within the organization.