ESET has become a founding member of the App Defense Alliance to protect the Google Play Store.
ESET will provide its detection capabilities and security for the Android ecosystem and will also spearhead investigations that make the Google Play Store safer.
The alliance complements the existing partnerships that ESET currently has with Google, including the integration with Chronicle, a division of Google Cloud, and the embedded ESET engine in Google Chrome Cleanup, a security tool that alerts Google Chrome users to potential threats.
“What was previously a reactive effort to catch security vulnerabilities is now a full-fledged and proactive campaign to protect billions of consumers and businesses at the source,” says Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET South Africa.
“ESET has constantly been at the forefront of threat research. Together with Google, ESET and the other App Defense Alliance members will be able to provide Google with the information to eliminate threats and help Android users stay one step ahead of cybercriminals.”
ESET was chosen by Google based upon its expertise with uncovering malicious apps in the Google Play Store, which has been well documented over the years. With the discovery of banking Trojans, spyware and ransomware, ESET has helped to identify some of the most sophisticated threats targeting Android mobile devices.
ESET’s research teams will now be intimately involved with the analysis of all applications and help to proactively protect the users of the Google Play Store. As part of this collaboration, ESET will share with Google its determinations on apps it detects as malicious, potentially harmful or unwanted, prior to the app being published on the Google Play Store.
Almost 40% of ESET’s employees work in research and development.