Improving the Android Smartphone Security against Various Malware Threats

Android is one of the most popular operating systems for mobile devices in the world today. One of its greatest advantages, being an open source operating system, represents also one of its major drawbacks. There exists a number of malicious programs that can harm devices running any operating system, including Android. In accordance to that, having a system that is secure presents a goal of a paramount importance. However, the fact that the improvements in the security often come with a penalty in the usability can present a problem. Furthermore, it is difficult to give a good answer to a question when a system is secure enough since that heavily depends on the user's needs. In this paper we investigate several ways on how to improve the security of Android devices through various customizations of the operating system or third-party applications.