Antivirus and Phone Tracking Suite for Android Smartphones

A new company named DroidSecurity is offering a consumer-oriented antivirus and phone-tracking suite for Android smartphones.

DroidSecurity Internet Security Suite, which costs $5 for one year, is a Java-based antivirus scanner. It also provides a service called Findr to trace lost phones if they’re left on, or detail the last known location of a phone that’s turned off. A third feature is CheckMate, to manage Android security ratings.

There aren’t many known Android viruses today, however DroidSecurity co-founder and CTO Dror Shalev believes as the market for Google Android phones and netbooks grows, there will be an inevitable increase in malware.

“We feel that as this market becomes more mature, it will also be more exploited,” Shalev says. The former security architect at Check Point Software left that job last year to co-found DroidSecurity with CEO Eran Pfeffer and Omri Sigelman, vice president of marketing.

More than 100,000 individuals have already downloaded for free DroidSecurity’s basic application, formerly called “AntiVirus,” via the Google Android apps site, Shalev says.

Under its business arrangement with Google, DroidSecurity will fork over to Google 30% of the sales price of paid applications purchased online through Google, with Google handling the billing. “If you buy the full version, we pay 30% of the price to Google, but it’s still better than with Apple and the iPhone,” Shalev says.

[androidcommunity]