Android security contrasted with Apple iPhone

[Mr Android]

Datamation’s Kenneth van Wyk rolls up his sleeves and sets to work comparing the relative security strengths of the Android platform and Apple’s iPhone, using a combination of architecture documentation, premonition and feedback from the latter’s avid hacker community. He rates them in categories of application security architecture, openness and configuration management, as well as examining how straightforward it is for third-party software to tap into the underlying safety features:

“There’s more to “openness” than just accessibility of a product’s source code. The Android team has clearly documented the process for developing and installing applications for Android, including how to interface with the underlying security framework. That openness has already resulted in at least one product vendor announcing it will be developing security applications—firewall, anti-spam, anti-malware, etc—for the platform” Kenneth van Wyk, Datamation

van Wyk rates Android more highly when it comes to platform security, particularly due to its open-source credentials and broadly comprehensive and widely available documentation. Frankly, though, it’s no great surprise that the primarily consumer-focused iPhone fails to satisfy an enterprise-based analysis; it’s well known that IT admins in businesses around the world are currently fielding calls from users to integrate the Apple cellphone into their systems, and finding it difficult to do thanks to the handset’s lack of the usual business functionality.


What remains to be seen is how well Google and the OHA can corral third-party developers in utilising the inherent security of the Android platform once software production ramps up next year. Currently platforms are well-guarded either by the manufacturers or the carriers themselves, with stringent guidelines that must be adhered to if developers are to get a foothold. Android promises an alternative, open-access environment, with the inherent danger that such openness may be seen as an opportunity for lax or careless software.

Chris Davies for Google-Phone.com