It’s a
weird week if an exploit, virus, botnet is not uncovered, and it is on the
increase on mobile devices. To help fix this problem, Google is rolling out
Google Play Protect, a new security platform that brings transparency to
Android’s anti-malware protections.
One component of Google Play Protect is a new antivirus
hub that shows which apps have been scanned for malware. Verify Apps, the
feature on Android Phones that protects against malware, exploits, and other
viruses in real time, shows which apps have been recently scanned in a carousel
menu, and when the most recent scan was completed. This feature was recently
enabled — so you can head to the “Updates” section of Google Play to check it out now. On top of that,
you’ll see a new Protect menu item in the Google Play Store, from which you can
do things like see a list of recently scanned apps or disable devices scanning.
Another
is Find My Device, a
rebrand of Google’s location-tracking Android Device Manager.
The new Find My Device app, just like Android Device
Manager before it, lets you easily locate, lock, and erase an Android device
associated with your Google account. That same support extends to smartwatches
powered by Android Wear.
Find My
Device puts your devices front and center. Once you sign in with your Google
credentials, you will see your phones, smartwatches, and tablets represented by
icons at the top, which replace the old app’s drop-down menu. Tapping a device
pulls up options to sound an audible alarm, lock it, or factory reset
it. You will also see its current Wi-Fi status and battery life, as well
as its rough geographic location on a Google Maps screen.
If your
device doesn’t have a lock screen, Find My Device lets you enter a password you
can use to unlock it when you find it. Alternatively, you can add a message or
phone number where a good Samaritan can reach you if they find it.
The overhaul is long overdue. Google launched Android Device Manager
in 2013, shortly after that year’s I/O conference, as an answer to Apple’s
Find My iPhone service. Before then, managing an Android phone remotely
required downloading and installing a third-party solution.
Google Play
Protect is the latest in
Google’s wide-ranging effort to improve Android security.
The search giant has worked with 351 wireless
carriers to improve the time it takes to test security patches before deploying
them to users, an effort that has resulted in a reduction of the software
approval process from between six and nine weeks to just one week. It has doled
out $1 million to independent security researchers, an amount that’s on track
to reach $2 million next year. And it has pursued an aggressive strategy of
encryption — as of December, 80 percent of Android 7.x (Nougat) users use
encryption.
Adrian Ludwig, director of Android security at Google,
sees social engineering — attacks that fool a user into installing an app
that compromises his or her device’s security — as one of the biggest
challenges facing app developers today. “People don’t want to think about
security,” he told members of the press at the RSA conference in February.
“They just want it to be that way.”
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