Microsoft makes preview of Defender ATP app available for Android

Microsoft is making a public preview of Defender ATP for Android available. The app offers protection against phishing and malware, among other things. In addition, Microsoft has announced the general availability of Defender for Linux.

Defender ATP for Android is for enterprise users and to use the app, the preview features option in the Microsoft Defender Security Center must be enabled. This gives IT administrators a central overview of the security status of Android devices in use within the company.

Defender ATP for Android protects against web threats and blocks access to insecure sites and domains via URLs in SMS, WhatsApp, email, browsers and other apps to protect against phishing, among other things. For this, Microsoft uses its SmartScreen service, which it also uses for its Edge browser. The Defender app can also proactively scan apps and files for the presence of malware. Microsoft also points out the integration with Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Conditional Access and the combination with Defender ATP for Android should prevent criminals from penetrating networks via mobile devices.

For the time being, it is only a version for Android, but Microsoft will announce more about the plans with iOS in the coming months. The company expanded Defender ATP to more platforms than just Windows in the past year. A preview for Linux was released early this year and now that software has been made available for general use. The company supports six distributions: RHEL 7.2+, CentOS Linux 7.2+, Ubuntu 16 LTS, SLES 12+, Debian 9+, and Oracle Linux 7.2. There will also be a version for macOS.