Google Online Security Blog: Diverse protections for a diverse ecosystem: Android Security 2016 Year in Review

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Diverse protections for a diverse ecosystem: Android Security 2016 Year in Review

22 March 2017

Posted by Adrian Ludwig & Mel Miller, Android Security Teamfull Year in Review reportwebinar
Protecting users from PHAsPotentially Harmful Apps (PHAs)

Now 0.016 percent of installs, trojans dropped by 51.5 percent compared to 2015

Now 0.003 percent of installs, hostile downloaders dropped by 54.6 percent compared to 2015

Now 0.003 percent of installs, backdoors dropped by 30.5 percent compared to 2015

Now 0.0018 percent of installs, phishing apps dropped by 73.4 percent compared to 2015

New security protections in Nougatvariety of new protections in Nougatstrengthen the security of the Linux Kernel

Encryption improvements: In Nougat, we introduced file-based encryption which enables each user profile on a single device to be encrypted with a unique key. If you have personal and work accounts on the same device, for example, the key from one account can’t unlock data from the other. More broadly, encryption of user data has been required for capable Android devices since in late 2014, and we now see that feature enabled on over 80 percent of Android Nougat devices.

New audio and video protections: We did significant work to improve security and re-architect how Android handles video and audio media. One example: we now store different media components into individual sandboxes, where previously they lived together. Now, if one component is compromised, it doesn’t automatically have permissions to other components, which helps contain any additional issues.

Even more security for enterprise users: We introduced a variety of new enterprise security features including “Always On” VPN, which protects your data from the moment your device boots up and ensures it isn't traveling from a work phone to your personal device via an insecure connection. We also added security policy transparency, process logging, improved wifi certification handling, and client certification improvements to our growing set of enterprise tools.

Working together to secure the Android ecosystem.launched our monthly security updates program

More than 735 million devices from 200+ manufacturers received a platform security update in 2016.

We released monthly Android security updates throughout the year for devices running Android 4.4.4 and up—that accounts for 86.3 percent of all active Android devices worldwide.

Our carrier and hardware partners helped expand deployment of these updates, releasing updates for over half of the top 50 devices worldwide in the last quarter of 2016.