[Samsung Galaxy S7 Questions and Answers] Spork Schivago:
I apologize in advance if I get your gender incorrect, a quick google search shows your name is unisex. I am going to assume you are a male, until otherwise told so. Yes sir, you are reading correctly that I must completely remove the apps from my company devices, including this phone. I appreciate that my wife bought it for me, but she doesn't fully understand the business like I do and I don't think she really thought it through. I imagine it costed a good bit of money, so I'd hate to have her send it back because I cannot remove the apps.

I appreciate the links to the threads, however, I already know how to disable the apps, but that is not enough. They physically cannot be installed based on what they're capable of doing (ie, a potential for viewing documents / schematics / pcb layouts labeled as confidential or highly confidential, or even worse, being poorly written in such a way where the program is exploitable and someone gains unauthorized access to our network, the certificates we have installed on the phone, etc.)

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Updating to Oreo is something that we will be wanting to do, but something I have been holding off on, in case I have to flash a modified firmware, or ROM as it's sometimes referred to. As for Knox being disabled, I actually believe that is something we are going to need to happen, have it disabled. We use special software that provides similar functionality that Knox provides, but is a lot more advanced. We actually use a few products for that.

I do have to admit that my knowledge regarding cell phone firmwares is a bit limited, although I do write firmware for other custom created devices. My worries with custom firmware are:

1) Certain security features (excluding Knox) might be disabled or removed (ie, the ability to encrypt the internal flash, encrypt the MicroSD card, having SELinux turned off, having secure boot disabled)

2) The firmware containing programs that most people would find useful but stuff I cannot have. If I have the ability to uninstall it, that's okay, I can do that. But if it's stuck, like it is now, where I can only disable it, that is not okay.

3) Something being installed without my knowledge.

Our security setup checks company phones to see if they're rooted, and if they are, it marks the device as non-compliant. I can have a device as non-compliant for a few hours....but if it's marked as non-compliant for a few days, one of the larger companies we're dealing with call to ask why, and then we have to do a secure session, where they login to one of our devices, but cannot physically click anything, just look, and have us go into various software to see why it's non-compliant, and, well, it's not fun.

We had it happen once because my wife accidentally sent an email from a personal device to a in-house email address, which never got encrypted, and it triggered a security audit, which was not fun at all and I'd rather not go through that again.

Are there no bloat-ware free signed official images or is there no way for a developer to import a signing key into the device to keep secureboot enabled? Also, out of curiosity, why would running a custom firmware disable Knox? In our case, that's something we need, however, I was just curious. And if we go the route of custom firmware, is there a way to show that it's gone, or will all the custom firmware's install a fake version of Knox?

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I really do appreciate it. I know how precious time can be, how busy a person can get, and I realize I have a lot of questions here, but I really need to make sure we're secure.

One of the programs we'll have on there is something called Symantec Endpoint Mobile. I am not sure if you have heard of it or not, but that provides virus protection, etc.