Forum Discussion
Is there any way to disable Google Play Protect (GPP) from an EMM or to otherwise whitelist apps from scanning?
Hi all,
My name is Melanie and I am a Product Manager on the Android Enterprise team. Lizzie highlighted your discussion here back to our team. Thank you for your feedback and the useful discussion.
Reading through your feedback, we’ve picked up on a point that was consistently mentioned around private company apps being scanned, so we wanted to provide you with some additional information around this.
Google Play Protect (GPP) is designed to help protect against malware. By default, GPP asks users to send unknown applications to Google for scanning. This is because apps installed via Google Play or Managed Google Play are already scanned, but applications side-loaded (including installed through EMM installers) are not. This is what triggers the "Send app for a security check?" dialogue.
Several of you mentioned you would prefer not to send private company apps, especially on company-owned devices, externally to Google servers. The servers involved in this processing are kept isolated and protected within Google, but we still acknowledge that some organizations may prefer not to upload any data to external servers.
Additionally, we acknowledge that the “Send app for a security check” message can be confusing to device users, especially as they may not be the app or device owners and are therefore unable to make a decision on this.
Based on all of your feedback you’ve provided, last week we made a change preventing unknown applications (e.g. private side-loaded apps) from being uploaded to Google servers on Fully Managed devices or Managed Work Profiles.
Please note that GPP is still running on these devices as usual, and is still comparing these apps to known PHAs. (So if an app is highly likely to be a PHA, users will still see the "Harmful app blocked" dialogue.) We’ll be updating our GPP Help Centre article shortly to reflect this change.
This change went live across all online devices on September 6th.
Thank you once again for your feedback and we look forward to hearing more across the community conversations. If you have any additional questions on this, please do feed them via Lizzie.
Melanie
Hello, I'm new to this conversation but found it because I've having this issue with Apps being yanked off our devices. I don't have the same chops many of the other posters have when it comes to Android, I've mostly been managing iOS devices via MDM for the past several years, but we were purchased last year and now I'm scrambling to learn both Intune and Android.
In our case, we use a third party software product that has a couple mobile apps available from within it. Their apps are not on the Play Store because one of their customers pushed the APKs out to a private Play Store instance and Google won't let the same APK exist in different Play Store environments (this is what the software vendor tells me).
We set a policy in Intune to allow sideloading for this one group of users, and that works -- they can sideload the apps. But the app gets deleted without fail. It just pops a notification with the App name and says "Deleted by your admin"
We've combed through every compliance policy and conditional access policy in Intune we can find. I've even gone so far as to exclude the user group from each policy that applies to it to see if that policy is the one causing the removal, but it always removes. On my test device, I can look at "Play Protect settings" and the option for 'Scan apps with Play Protect' is switched off, but that app still gets removed.
Now I'm mad at everyone. I'm mad at the software vendor because they really ought to fix the problem on their side and publish the #$%& apps to the Play Store. I'm mad at Intune because there's nothing in their logs that tells me what on earth is initiating the removal process. I'm mad a Google because the device does not log the process that initiates the removal either -- and frankly, we should be able to push the APKs to a private instance for ourselves but we can't.
I can certainly relate to a lot of the frustrations that you're having with the Android Enterprise system combined with your usage of Microsoft Intune. With that said, it sounds like the issues that you're experiencing with sideloading apps is not necessarily a GPP issue. This seems to be proven out by the fact that even when manually disabling the GPP feature on your test device it still gets removed. I think this may be more evidence of Intune actually removing the sideloaded app versus it being GPP preventing the app from being installed in the first place.
While it is true (and frustrating) that only one instance of a particular app Bundle ID can exist across all Google Play servers including both Public and Private distribution channels, your app developer should still be able to compile a new version of the same app under a new Bundle ID so that it can be uploaded into Play. If I were them I would compile a new Bundle ID and then upload that into my own Developer Console of Google Play as a Private app and then grant your organization ID access to that Private Play app. This way they only have to change the Bundle ID of their app one time and be able to grant Play distribution to any approved organizations. If they otherwise build a custom compile with a new Bundle ID and provide it directly to you then you will upload it into your own Private Play store through the Google Play iFrame and effective consume that Bundle ID as well. This would translate to them having to provide you with your own custom compiled Bundle ID for every single new version of the app. I can understand their reluctance to avoid that sort of scenario because it adds additional overhead to every single new version release as they'd potentially end up having to compile different versions for every customer that they have that is limited to only using Google Play for app distribution to their devices. By creating a new Bundle ID that they upload into their own Private Play store they can reserve that ID and only have to fork their compile process one time. This is a somewhat reasonable ask to put back on them. Note however that this will also translate to the developer having to manage the release tracks for each new version of the app that you need delivered which does still put additional overhead on them. This could be another reason that they're pushing back on your request.
Note that your developer is likely pushing back on this because you're using an EMM (Intune) that ONLY supports installation of apps via Managed Play as a baseline lowest common denominator function of Android Enterprise Management standards. Other more capable EMMs extend beyond the capabilities of AMAPI with a custom DPC and these EMMs offer the ability to install APKs directly on fully managed Android Enterprise devices without the restrictions and limitations of having to pass your app install through Managed Google Play. For mission critical / line-of-business Android apps this is still the approach that I recommend. Google Play based app distribution is otherwise still too limited when it comes to version control, roll back, granular installation scheduling etc for mission critical apps, in my opinion. My guess is that your app developer shares a lot of these same opinions and are ultimately trying to protect you from these risks by expecting you to have an EMM capable of direct app installation with proper control. You are taking their frustrations out on them when in reality you should be frustrated that Google hasn't provided a complete set of comprehensive installation controls necessary to support line of business devices and Intune has effectively aligned their strategy completely with Google by not offering you any additional capabilities.
