Chairman of antivirus company claims iOS more secure than Android

Steve Chang, the chairman of Trend Micro, which is the biggest antivirus company for corporate servers, says iOS is intrinsically more secure than Android due to its closed nature. In his own words:

"Android is open-source, which means the hacker can also understand the underlying architecture and source code. We have to give credit to Apple, because they are very careful about it. It’s impossible for certain types of viruses to operate on the iPhone."

As we all know, it's perceived that one of the reasons Android is so popular is due to its open ecosystem. This is well-illustrated by the fact that Apple has a strict app approval policy, while Google relies on the developers' decency:

"On all computing devices, users necessarily entrust at least some of their information to the developer of the application they’re using. Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer."

This is not always working, though, and we have posted a few examples of developers who have proven that Android has a few nagging security issues. Not that iOS is perfectly secure, but it faces a different threat - the so-called social-engineering attacks, i.e. instances when users personally authorize the installation of malware.

Some people see smartphones and tablets as "the future PCs", and the chairman of Trend Micro is part of this gang:

“Smartphones are the next PC, and once they’re adopted by enterprises, data loss will be a very key problem.”

This is not exactly what we would call a "neutral opinion", however, it's a fact that Google has faced a few security problems lately. This doesn't take much of its popularity, though, and the latest surveys claim it's now the second most popular mobile platform.

source: BusinessWeek