AV-Test.org - Endurance Test: the Best Security Apps for Android

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Cyber gangsters are relentlessly continuing their attempts to use fake and infected Android apps to take control of users’ mobile devices. Every user who wants to do away with the constant worry about such threats needs to find a good protection app for their Android device. These tools identify dangerous apps or their actions, protect user data, and ensure that control of the device remains in the user’s hands. In its lab, the AV-TEST team tested 16 security apps in a 6-month endurance test to determine which solution provides the best protection on Android systems. Here are the best endurance runners when it comes to Android security.

Be it a smartphone or a tablet, every unprotected device with an Android system is a worthwhile target for cyber gangsters. Such devices can, for example, be used for crypto mining or as part of an attack botnet, especially given that they are available round the clock. Attackers also like to capture smartphones to steal identities or use them for dark transactions. To achieve these goals, cyber gangsters provide clueless users with infected apps. Worryingly enough, such apps can often be found in app stores, even in the Google Play Store.

Users who cannot or do not want to have to decide whether each new app is a friend or a foe need to be able to rely on a good protection app for Android. But which option is the best? To answer this question, the AV-TEST team examined 16 well-known security apps for Android in its lab in a six-month endurance test conducted between May and October. Just like every test, the results revealed both highs and lows: while many security apps proved their worth as recommendations, Android’s standard security tool, Google Play Protect, only provided moderate protection. It therefore ended up second to last in the current endurance test.

The best security apps for Android

The testers in the AV-TEST lab pushed all of the security apps to the absolute limit. In the vital protection test, the apps were required to identify more than 9,200 completely new, infected apps within a period of six months in the so-called real-time test. An additional test using the reference set expected the apps to filter out a further 9,400 malware apps that have been around for a while and to protect the device.
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