In an era where digital security is paramount, Samsung Electronics has unveiled a suite of advanced security and privacy features for its upcoming Galaxy smartphones, set to debut with One UI 8. These enhancements are designed to fortify on-device artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, bolster cross-device threat detection, and introduce quantum-resistant encryption for network security.
Knox Enhanced Encrypted Protection (KEEP): Safeguarding On-Device AI
At the forefront of these innovations is Knox Enhanced Encrypted Protection (KEEP), a new security architecture aimed at protecting personalized, AI-driven features. KEEP establishes encrypted, app-specific storage environments within the device’s secure storage area, ensuring that each application can access only its own sensitive information. This design prevents unauthorized data sharing between apps, thereby enhancing user privacy.
KEEP supports Galaxy’s Personal Data Engine (PDE), which secures deeply personal insights such as user routines and preferences. These insights power features like Now Brief and Smart Gallery search, all while remaining entirely on-device. The integration of KEEP with Knox Vault, Samsung’s tamper-resistant hardware security environment, provides an additional layer of protection, ensuring that personal data is tightly contained and under the user’s control.
The system-level structure of KEEP allows it to scale across various Galaxy AI innovations. Beyond PDE, it now safeguards features like Now Brief and Smart Suggestions, enabling more advanced AI experiences without compromising privacy. This approach redefines mobile device data protection, embedding privacy as a core design principle rather than a mere setting.
Knox Matrix: Proactive Cross-Device Threat Detection
Samsung is also advancing its cross-device security framework with enhancements to Knox Matrix. Through One UI 8, Knox Matrix delivers more proactive and user-friendly protection for connected Galaxy devices. When a device is flagged for serious risks—such as system manipulation or identity forgery—it is automatically signed out of the Samsung Account. This action cuts off access to cloud-connected services, preventing threats from spreading across devices.
Users receive notifications across their connected Galaxy devices and are guided to the Security status menu in their device settings, where they can review and address the issue. Even devices lacking the latest security updates trigger a yellow-level warning, prompting users to respond before vulnerabilities escalate.
These updates make Galaxy’s ecosystem-level protection more dynamic, intuitive, and visible, empowering users to maintain trust across all their devices with greater clarity and confidence.
Secure Wi-Fi: Quantum-Resistant Encryption for Future-Ready Security
Building on its commitment to quantum-safe security, Samsung is upgrading its Secure Wi-Fi feature with post-quantum cryptography. This enhancement secures the key exchange process at the core of encrypted connections, ensuring robust privacy even over public networks. The new cryptographic framework is designed to withstand emerging threats, particularly those anticipated in the era of quantum computing.
Quantum computing poses potential risks to current data protection methods. By integrating post-quantum cryptography, Secure Wi-Fi becomes more resilient against future attacks that aim to capture encrypted data with the intent to decrypt it once quantum technology matures—a tactic known as harvest now, decrypt later. This upgrade fortifies the secure tunnel between Galaxy devices and Samsung servers, reinforcing the integrity of data transmissions in high-risk environments like public Wi-Fi.
In addition to this future-ready foundation, Secure Wi-Fi offers a suite of advanced privacy features:
– Auto Protect: Automatically activates in public places such as cafés, airports, or hotels, securing Wi-Fi connections without requiring user action.
– Enhanced Privacy Protection (EPP): Encrypts internet traffic and routes it through multiple layers, combining packet encryption and relay to anonymize device information and help prevent tracking.
– Protection Activity: Provides visibility into protection history by showing which apps and networks have additional protection and how much data was encrypted over time.
A Trusted Platform with Built-In Safeguards
Beyond these latest innovations, Samsung continues to strengthen the core protections that underpin the Galaxy experience. These features reflect a multi-layered security approach that protects across hardware and software while giving users greater visibility and control:
– Knox Vault: Helps protect sensitive credentials such as passwords, PINs, and biometrics in a physically isolated environment, offering an added layer of defense even if the main operating system is compromised.
– Auto Blocker: Provides defense by default—blocking unauthorized app installs, restricting command-based attacks, and mitigating risks from potential zero-click threats.
– Advanced Intelligence Settings: Gives users the option to turn off online data processing for AI features, so personal information stays on-device, fully under their control.
– Enhanced Theft Protection: Helps protect personal data even in high-risk situations such as robbery, using safeguards like Identity Check and Security Delay to prevent unauthorized access.
This latest set of updates reinforces Samsung’s long-standing commitment to mobile security that evolves with innovation. It strengthens on-device privacy for personalized AI with Knox Enhanced Encrypted Protection, expands transparency and user control through Knox Matrix, and introduces quantum-resistant protection to Secure Wi-Fi for a more future-ready Galaxy experience. As new security challenges emerge, Samsung remains focused on delivering safeguards that are built-in, always on, and ready for what’s next.
