Google today announced a new initiative intended to fight the spread of malicious apps on Android. It’s called the App Defense Alliance, and it’s a collaboration between Google, ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium that’ll aim to reduce the risk of app-based malware by identifying and remediating new threats.

Google says that it’s integrating its Google Play Protect scanner service — which uses a combination of machine learning and static/dynamic analysis to detect abusive behavior — with each App Defense Alliance partner’s scanning engines, ultimately toward the goal of generating risk intelligence as apps are being queued to publish to the Google Play Store. Partners can send a request to Google Play Protect to have an app analyzed, after which the service sends the scan results directly to the partner. It’s a two-way street: Google Play Protect can send requests to partner’s scanner services and receive results from the partner’s scanning engines.

ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium will perform these and other checks prior to apps going live on the Play Store.

“The Android ecosystem is thriving with over 2.5 billion devices, but this popularity also makes it an attractive target for abuse. This is true of all global platforms: where there is software with worldwide proliferation, there are bad actors trying to attack it for their gain,” wrote VP of Android security and privacy Dave Kleidermacher. “Working closely with our industry partners gives us an opportunity to collaborate with some truly talented researchers in our field and the detection engines they’ve built.”

Kleidermacher says partners, speaking of, were hand-picked these partners based on their successes in finding potential threats and their dedication to improving the ecosystem. He asserts that multiple heuristic engines working in concert will increase the efficiency in identifying potentially harmful apps.

“Knowledge sharing and industry collaboration are important aspects in securing the world from attacks. We believe working together is the ultimate way we will get ahead of bad actors,” added Kleidermacher. “We’re excited to work with these partners to arm the Google Play Store against bad apps.”