Boost Your Samsung Galaxy Security with These New Updates

Samsung is having a mixed 2024 on the security front. Pixel’s more streamlined approach to monthly security updates has left the Korean giant trailing with critical delays, while the glaring security gap between Android and iOS taints Samsung flagships against Apple equivalents.

But Samsung is fighting back. The new security updates announced this week take the innovation fight directly to the iPhone. “Concerns over the invasion of privacy and the loss of data ownership have become increasingly common,” the company warned on Wednesday. “As technology continues to become further embedded in our everyday lives, our communication increasingly takes place online—which often means sharing sensitive and private information over the internet.”

Samsung’s reply

Samsung’s answer is clever and much needed. Adding Private Sharing to your phone’s Quick Share menu will “ensure that only the designated recipients can open the files you send—no one else. You can also set permissions and expiration dates for the data, so it’s only viewable for a limited amount of time. Furthermore, you can give read-only access without the ability to re-share, revoke the data access whenever you like, restrict screenshotting, and see when the recipient received and opened the file.”

There are some limitations—20 files at any one time, and a total size limit of just 200MB, but all those files “are securely and fully encrypted when shared, courtesy of blockchain-based encryption technology.” To use the feature, just click ‘Quick Share’ and then the three dots for more options, then turn on Private Sharing. You can check the permissions you have granted at any time and even revoke access.

But there’s a problem

The issue is that this new feature only works between Galaxy devices, but then many Apple features only work between iPhones. It is another way to set Samsung apart from other Android OEMs, especially Pixel, and coming just as Samsung Messages gives way to Google Messages, it’s timely.

iPhone’s sharing options, in general, are clunky and much less intuitive than you’d expect. It’s also the major letdown with iCloud in general—it hasn’t been developed with sharing in mind, but rather as a cloud extension of an individual user’s device. Samsung has delivered an iPhone-beating solution and that’s very welcome.

Conversely, the other security update announced this week is a straight copy from Apple. Enhanced Data Protection with end-to-end encryption mimics Apple’s Advanced Data Protection—an exceptionally seamless end-to-end encryption update for iCloud. This means almost all iPhone data synced to Apple’s cloud is user-eyes-only. This includes backups and iCloud Drive, and even better protects cloud backups for other apps, notable WhatsApp.

What the future holds

Samsung’s response is to do the same—albeit this copy and paste shouldn’t vex senior management in the way orange ultra watch straps seem to have done. “Starting with the Galaxy S24,” the company announced, “Enhanced Data Protection [will] offer additional protection for Galaxy devices when you sync or back up your data with Samsung Cloud. This feature mitigates data loss via end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which ensures data can only be encrypted or decrypted on your device and cannot be seen by anyone but you.” Just as with Apple, users should keep a recovery code just in case. If you lose access to your device and don’t have a code, you lose your data.

Just as with Apple, only secured endpoints will be able to access your cloud data, but that also means not even Samsung has access—even if pushed by law enforcement.

Samsung has taken some knocks in recent months with seeming delays in security updates when compared to Pixel, and a risk that it falls behind Google’s ability to seamlessly manage hardware and software, as per Apple. The news this week that Google is advising users to disable 2G—not a Samsung option, is notable.

But when seen as part of Android’s more general tidy-up, which includes a Play Store cull and new live threat detection coming with Android 15, Samsung will present a much more capable alternative to iPhone on the security and privacy front than ever before. And while private sharing is welcome, the standout is encrypted cloud. This genuinely turns the cloud into a secure extension of a user’s device and in my mind is a must-have—as I have advised Apple users. My suggestion is to enable it as soon as it’s available.