Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich update is tightly integrated with Google+ and Google accounts, which may play a role in helping the young social network grow.

Having a Google+ profile allows users to take advantage of new features like the People app in ICS.

The app takes users’ contacts and links them to their Google+ photos, providing a list of friends and family members and giving quick access to their status updates and posts on the social network.

Because ICS makes signing up for a Google+ profile easy, and being a member of the social network allows Android users to take advantage of new features, it’s likely the updated platform will lead to substantial growth for the site.

Google+ has grown faster than several of its competitors, even while interest in the site has faded of late.

ICS also prompts its users to sign up for a regular Google account in order to register their credit card to make purchases in the Android Market.

Past versions of Android did not ask users to make an account until they tried to buy something in the store, making it easy for them to back out of the mobile store and ignore it.

Now, new customers will likely be more inclined to sign up for an account during the set up, making all future purchases through the Android devices easier for Google to initiate.

The primary reason users give for Google+’s lack of appeal has been that their friends are not on the site, so they report having little reason to make frequent visits.

However, ICS will likely give millions of users a reason to sign up on the site, leading to more traffic and fueling further growth.

Google announced it has activated 200 million Android devices to date.

Not all of them will run ICS, but all future devices will likely run the OS and millions more are expected to receive the update, giving the company’s social network tremendous reach.

Gaining more user accounts with credit cards will increase Google’s revenues and help the company create an ecosystem of products, but ICS still provides the biggest boost to Google+.

A growing number of companies , including start-ups and big names in computer security like McAfee, Symantec, Sophos and AVG.

See a business opportunity in mobile security  protecting cellphones from hacks and malware that could read text messages.

Store location information or add charges directly to mobile phone bills.

Hackers have broken into the cellphones of celebrities like Scarlett Johanssonand Prince William. But what about the rest of us.

Who might not have particularly salacious photos or voice messages stored in our phones, but nonetheless have emails , credit card numbers and records of our locations?

McAfee introduced a service for consumers to protect their smartphones, tablets and computers at once, and last week the company introduced a mobile security system for businesses.

Last month, AT&T partnered with Juniper Networks to build mobile security apps for consumers and businesses.

The defence department too has called for companies and universities to come up with ways to protect Android devices from malware.

One start-up , Lookout, last week raised $40 million from venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total to $76.5 million.

The company makes an app that scans other apps that people download to their phones, looking for malware and viruses. It automatically tracks 700,000 mobile apps and updates Lookout whenever it finds a threat.

Most consumers, though they protect their computers, are unaware that they need to secure their phones, he said, “but the smartphones people have are computers, and the same thing that can happen on your computer can happen on your phone.

Unlike PCs, the chance of running into something in the wild for your phone is quite low,” saidCharlie Miller, a researcher at Accuvant, a security consulting company, and a hacker who has revealed weaknesses in iPhones.

That’s partly because it’s more secure but mostly because the bad guys haven’t gotten around to it yet. But the bad guys are going to slowly follow the money over to your phones.