It is widely that Android as an OS and platform is simply not as secure as iOS. While Google has made some great strides in this area over the last couple of years, ask any average joe and they will still believe that iOS is more secure than Android. Now, in a short interview with Motherboard after delivering a speech at a security conference in Manhattan, Adrian Ludwig, the director of security at Android, said that both Android and iOS are on the same level when it comes to security.
More specifically, he said that the Google Pixel and an iPhone offer pretty much the same level of security, though the open source nature of Android will benefit it in the long run. However, Ludwig failed to elaborate how being open source will help Android in the future and allow it to become more secure than iOS. In his speech at the security conference, Ludwig said how there is a misconception surrounding the security of Android devices. He revealed that Safety Net, which is built into Android, scans almost 400 million devices per day and almost 6 billion apps on a daily basis. It helps in the detection and removal of harmful apps. In fact, as per Ludwig, less than 1% Android smartphones are infected with malware. He cited the example of Stagefright, a series of vulnerability which affected almost all Android devices out there, and said that there was no real-life application of an exploit based on it. The security director, however, agreed that Android lags behind in update cycles and security patches due to negligence from OEMs and carriers. He said that Google has “quite a bit of work left” before it can reach a point where security updates are rolled out on a “regular basis across the whole ecosystem. ” Do you agree with Ludwig here and think that Android is as secure as iOS?
