In the article: Android Security Features, you may learn the following. Android security features include a variety of protections against malware, data breaches, and other attacks. These security features are designed to help keep your device safe from malicious apps and websites.
Android’s security features also help protect your personal information and privacy. Android’s security features are available on both mobile devices and smart TVs. There are a variety of ways to protect your Android device against security threats.
What is Android Security
Android security is the protection of mobile devices and applications from malicious software (malware) and unauthorized access. Android security includes both hardware-based security features and software-based security features.
Android Security Features
The first line of defense against any type of attack is the integrity of the operating system (OS). Insecure OSs can allow malicious software to gain access to sensitive information. A secure OS would have minimal vulnerabilities and would make the most basic tasks impossible without the correct credentials.
Application Sandbox
Applications must be isolated from each other on computers running Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. This is accomplished by providing a sandbox where applications can operate safely but cannot affect each other.
Sandboxes are containers designed to separate untrusted code from trusted code.
- Untrusted code operates under the rules of its own system and could potentially damage the computer.
- Trusted code operates under the supervision of the sandbox and cannot do anything outside of its limits.
To accomplish this, sandboxes create a virtual space inside a computer that isolates each application from other applications. When an application runs, it is given certain instructions regarding what it may and may not do. These restrictions are enforced by the sandbox.
Secure Inter-Process Communication
Communication among processes is important in order for a computer to function properly. Without proper communication, programs could not coordinate their efforts and would be unable to interact with each other.
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JVM Security
JVM security is a critical aspect of Java application security. A JVM provides access control at several levels, including the privileges of individual threads, classes, users, and groups. Threads have their own virtual machine (VM) environment. In addition to providing memory protection services, a VM can also enforce the isolation of different threads.
Application Signing
Application signing enables applications to be digitally signed using either a public/private key pair or certificate infrastructure. An application signature consists of two parts, a digital signature algorithm, and a hash algorithm. Digital signatures can be created using a variety of algorithms, such as RSA and DSA. Hash algorithms create a hash value for any given input string. These values can then be compared to verify if two data sets are identical.
Application-Defined Permissions
Permissions are defined by the developer or the owner of the application. Permission can consist of one or more actions. Applications that handle sensitive information often rely on user-defined permissions to determine whether certain operations should be allowed.
The article: Android Security Features, is all about the security features of the Android operating system.
User-Granted Permissions
User-granted permissions allow users to grant access to the specific functionality of applications. Similar to application permissions, user-granted permissions also consist of one or more operations. This class differs from the previous type of permission in that each operation may require an additional level of authorization.
App Locker & Data Encryption
Apps, apps, apps! You’ve probably downloaded some pretty questionable ones over the years. But now, if you’re using Android, you have a chance to lock down your phone by locking out dangerous apps. Apps that try to get access to your personal information, such as banking apps or apps that take pictures without your permission, won’t work unless they are allowed to run. If you want to keep your personal data safe, you’ll need to put security measures in place. Luckily, Google’s built-in app locker works seamlessly to help protect your privacy. When enabled, only specific apps are able to access any sensitive data — even while the device is locked. And although you may not realize it, most phones support encryption of data stored locally in memory at rest (as well as in transit). So no matter where you store your data, it’s encrypted, secure, and protected.
Device Protection
If anything happens to your phone, it could be devastating. That’s why it’s important to create a password for your smartphone. A strong passcode helps prevent anyone else from accessing your device — and their data — if they ever steal it or damage it. There are many ways to set up a great password, including changing how long it takes to enter your passcode, choosing a random sequence of characters, and adding numbers, symbols, and special characters. Most devices already have default options set up, but you might find yourself going back and forth between them. Or maybe you don’t know what the best option is for your specific situation. That’s okay! Just remember these tips for setting up passwords that make sense for your device.
Anti-Theft Technology
Most smartphones today are equipped with anti-theft technology. In fact, most newer smartphones can remotely wipe your entire device if it gets lost or stolen. When paired with a remote control app like Find My Phone, it’s possible to track and locate your stolen or misplaced device. Even better, you can remotely turn off certain features, such as the display screen or microphone, making it harder for someone to use your phone to call for help.
Backup Your Devices
Even though mobile devices aren’t exactly known for being rugged, it’s still smart to back up your data often. If your device breaks, you should be able to restore everything you’ve saved. Backing up your device doesn’t mean just copying files onto a computer, however; you should be backing up things like contacts, calendar events, text messages, voice memos, notes, and more. Also, consider adding a separate backup drive, such as a USB flash drive or external hard drive, to safeguard even more valuable information.
Password Management Apps
Whether you carry around a single device or several, managing your logins and passwords can be a pain. Thankfully, there are tons of password management apps out there that solve this problem. Many apps allow you to save your login credentials on your device, automatically fill out forms, and generate unique passwords. However, before downloading any third-party apps, it’s always wise to read reviews. Read recommendations carefully, and stick to apps and websites that have been reviewed positively. Don’t forget to change your passwords regularly, both online and offline, so you can keep them safe.
Mobile ID Authentication
Many banks offer accounts that are tied to a user’s existing credit card number. Because of this, hackers can easily look up your account details via public records databases, such as those provided by Facebook or Twitter. To avoid this issue, sign up for mobile identity authentication, which is a way for your bank to verify who you are by verifying your mobile phone number. By verifying your phone number instead of your name or address, you can provide additional layers of protection against fraudsters.
Use Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication is a way for users to add an extra layer of security to their accounts. Instead of entering your username and password alone, two-step verification requires you to enter a code sent to your device. Depending on the service, you might receive a text message, email, or push notification. Once entered, you can then proceed with logging in. While this process adds an extra step, it makes it much harder for hackers to gain unauthorized access to your account
Lockscreen
When your phone boots up it’ll show you what’s currently on screen. If a person were to attempt to boot your phone they’d probably notice something odd happening right away. You’d notice a small camera icon in the lower-left corner of the lock screen. That means that the front-facing camera is on and ready to record video. This helps prevent someone from booting your phone if your screen is cracked (like the bottom) and looking at your screen. In addition to that, it also shows any recent notifications that may be waiting for you.
App Locker
Apps are great things, especially when we talk about productivity apps. But sometimes people just need to use these apps without feeling guilty about how much information they’re accessing. One way developers can offer this is through app lockers. An app locker lets you access certain apps via pin numbers or passcodes. So even though you don’t want to give away the number to your bank account, you can still easily access this information. And depending on how secure they make their app lockers, you might be able to set different codes for different types of banking.
Password Manager
A password manager keeps track of all of your passwords across all of your accounts. If you have a lot of accounts and a lot of websites you can create a long list of random words/numbers/symbols and then store that list in an online database. Then anytime you’re trying to log in to one of your accounts you can type in your username and password instead of memorizing dozens of separate ones. This makes logging in to your email, banking, social networking sites, etc much easier.
Device Protection
There are a few ways to protect your device. The first thing first is ensuring that it has some sort of password protection enabled. Next, the device should be backed up regularly to ensure that no personal information is being stored on it (especially now that our phones are getting so big). Finally, you should always make sure that your device is running the latest version of the software. Because hackers are always looking for loopholes in older versions of software that allow them to gain access to your device.
Anti-Virus
To keep your system fully protected always run antivirus software. While it is true that malware can be spread through various methods, viruses and worms cannot exist in a networked environment unless someone gives them permission to do so.
Antivirus software works similarly to the operating system’s security settings. Once installed, it scans files as they are transferred to your computer’s hard disk drive and prevents harmful programs from reaching your operating system.
There are many different types of antivirus scanners, including antispyware, firewalls, content filtering, and URL scanning. You should select antivirus software that provides the features you require while keeping your budget in mind. Most security professionals recommend using two or three antivirus programs to cover the bases.
While antivirus isn’t necessarily a feature of Android, it does play a major role in helping protect your device. By having one installed, your device can check files for viruses before opening them. This can help stop malware from infecting your device and causing problems down the road.
Browser Hijacking Prevention
Every browser offers its own little set of tools to help detect malicious content on web pages that a user visits. Some of these tools are more effective than others. Chrome, for example, uses a blacklist system where it only allows trusted sites to run scripts within the browser. So this prevents third-party code from executing on pages you visit. Other browsers, however, don’t do anything special to help identify malicious content. As a result, they tend to open themselves up to potential threats.
Location Services
When a smartphone is powered on, it automatically checks to see whether or not location services are enabled. This makes sense since GPS tracking is one of the primary reasons that smartphones exist. Without it, your phone wouldn’t know exactly where it was at all times.
Smart Lock
Also known as SmartWakeLock this tool works similarly to Location Services. However, it will turn off the backlight of your screen so that it doesn’t disturb anyone else in your home. This is helpful at night because if you leave your phone unattended it could potentially wake up sleeping partners.
Screen Time
Notifications are useful sometimes, but often times they become distracting. If you want to limit the number of notifications you receive you can disable them completely. Or you can choose how strict you want to be by turning down the notification volume.
Clear Recent Data
Once again, notifications can be useful, but if you never read them they start to get old really fast. To avoid cluttering up your home screens you can clear out your recent apps and files to give the space back to something new.
Task Killer
Having too many applications running can slow down your device. Most users tend to have hundreds of apps on their devices, which puts a strain on processing power. To help combat this Google introduced Tasks in Marshmallow. These are shortcuts to quickly launch applications/apps that you use frequently. For instance, if I wanted to send an email I would click on the Gmail shortcut located near my calendar widget.
Auto Backup
Many Android users take advantage of this service and choose to back up everything every single day. This ensures that you won’t lose all of your important work if your phone breaks or gets lost.
Conclusion
The features explained above are not all the features of android they are just the most noticeable ones.
If you like the Android operating system you can indeed read our other article: Android Operating System: A Complete Guide, which includes everything you need to know or you want to know about Android.
You can indeed read our other Guides which are written about other operating systems such as; Microsoft Windows, iOS, and mac OS, or if you want something about the operating system itself so go with Every Information about Operating System
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