In the wake of Stagefright, LG plans monthly security patches too

The Stagefright exploit, reported last month, seems to have the Android OEMs a little shaken, and LG is the next big OEM to announce that it will be providing monthly security updates to its smartphones from now on.

In an email to Wired, LG states that it will be proving updates each month and will be making them available to carriers right away. Hopefully, carriers will also participate in providing timely security updates, as they can often be the cause of major update delays.

“LG will be providing security updates on a monthly basis which carriers will then be able to make available to customers immediately. We believe these important steps will demonstrate to LG customers that security is our highest priority.”

In the past couple of days, Google and Samsung have also announced that they will be providing fast track rollouts for security updates. Typically, companies lump a ton of security patches in with their next big update for a smartphone, but many handsets quickly drop off the update radar all together. Little and often updates should really help to keep handsets secure.

Although security exploits are never a good thing, it looks like Stagefright has finally jump scared OEMs into taking customer security more seriously. Although we will have to wait and see how long companies are willing to provide support for and how many older handset users will still be left in the dark.

We can probably expect similar announcements from other major OEMs in the next few days.