Qualcomm's Snapdragon Smart Protect will help keep your next phone malware-free

If you own a smartphone or computer, device security should always be on your mind. With thousands of unknown (“zero-day”) malware apps being generated each day, some of the traditional signature-based antivirus solutions aren’t always able to detect them all. So to better help protect users from mobile malware, Qualcomm today announced a new technology called Snapdragon Smart Protect.

Smart Protect will be present on newer Qualcomm chipsets, such as the upcoming Snapdragon 820, and will be used to help detect different types of mobile malware. Qualcomm has created new APIs that can be used by OEMs and antivirus app vendors to help complement their security technology with “real-time machine learning-based behavioral analysis”.

Qualcomm explains:

Snapdragon Smart Protect is engineered to look at the actual behavior of device applications in real time and almost instantly detect and classify any application behavior that is considered suspicious or anomalous. Suspicious applications are classified into severity levels of malware, ranging from more destructive malware applications, to spyware apps, to less threatening though annoying adware apps.

Qualcomm says Snapdragon Smart Protect will be available in consumer devices in the first half of 2016, in conjunction with the Snapdragon 820. Popular mobile security companies such as Avast, AVG and Lookout are working to utilize Smart Protect in their mobile applications, as well.