10 Ways to Harden Android Security

Want to make sure your Android device is safe from attack? Davey Winder delivers ten ways to beef up your smartphone and tablet security.

- Davey Winder

We love Android – but with dozens of versions of the OS out there, running on thousands of devices contracted to different networks, managing risk for the platform is no easy task.In the future, Google hopes that machine learning will identify security holes and protect Android from malicious apps. For now, it relies partly upon a pair of in-house tools. For apps, there’s Bouncer – an automated system that analyses apps submitted to the Play Store for malicious or buggy code. To test the OS itself, Google uses a system called Clusterfuzz, which throws random inputs at Android with the aim of exposing bugs in the code. As a fallback, it also operates the Android Security Rewards programme, which pays up to £30,000 for third-party reports that lead to a vulnerability fix.

Unfortunately, whatever good work Google does is undermined by the fragmentation issue. Smartphone manufacturers are quick to drop support for older handsets, with the result that the majority of Android smartphones and tablets in use –which adds up to more than 4,000 different devices – simply aren’t receiving critical security updates.

Even if you’re lucky enough to be using a device that is kept up to date, you need to play your part by being security-minded. Here, then, are ten ways that you can maximise the safety of your Android devices.

1. DON’T SIDELOAD APPS