Corliss Online Financial Mag

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Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Monday drew a bit of derisive laughter from a tech-savvy audience when he pronounced the Android platform more secure than Apple iOS at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla.

Schmidt sought to disabuse the notion -- widely espoused by some in the tech security community -- that Google Android is not secure at a time when it has come under heavy attack by the cyberunderground.

CyberTruth video: How an ordinary Android handset can be turned into a spyphone

Last week, Trend Micro issued a report proffering that one million "malware threats" had been "unleashed" against the Android platform in the first nine months of 2013.

Trend Micro's tally includes malicious programs that can take control of a mobile device, as well as "high risk" apps that harvest personal information indiscriminately, says J.D. Sherry, Trend's vice president of technology and solutions.

"App developers ask for the moon and over provision because it's so easy to do," Sherry says.

Even so, Schmidt certainly can construct a viable technical argument for Android besting iOS in security robustness.

At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas this summer, Georgia Tech researchers demonstrated how anyone can pose as an app developer and finagle Apple's app-approval process to install a malicious application on non jail-broken iOS devices.