I hate lollipops. Rollback KitKat? Root or not to Root? Custom ROM or stock? And what about security updates?

Apologies for long title.

I need some advice please.

I'm really disappointed with Android 5.0.2 for a number of reasons:

1. 
   

   notifications/lock screen

   
   

   This is really annoying because on KitKat 4.4.4 it worked perfectly . the ability to pause + rewind+ffwd music in radio apps or even Gmusic whilst displaying nothing but album art and buttons. This is no longer the case on lollipop. Notifications toggle buttons are small and only really work with Google music app. Jango and Rad.io don't display correctly on lock screen, even with priorities on notification section.... Aaaaaaaaargh!!!!!

   
   


2. 
   

   Access to notifications pull down menu from lockscreen.

   
   

This is surely the biggest of the cockups from the devs. Seriously??? I can turn Wi-Fi on/off , mobile data, aeroplane mode, wifi tethering, location on/off . where's the security concerns? If somebody steals my phone , they can mute it, aeroplane mode it, even tether my data for their consumption. Have I missed something here???

3- also the automatic brightness adjustment is crap at the best of times...and the white/ grey keyboard is just not for me.

KitKat was perfect. The only reason I updated to lollipop was for the security cve updates. As there were 4 cve vulnerabilities. Remote arbitrary code execution etc.

So this brings me to the questions/ options:

1. If I rollback to KitKat is there any way to mitigate the vulnerabilities? I have a detailed list of the cve 's . If so could you point me in the right direction?


2. 
   

   Do I need to root and install custom ROM in order to mitigate vulnerabilities and rid myself of the material design from lollipop?

   
   


3. 
   

   Is there an alternative to this? I don't mind being stock or not, root or not... I am security and privacy conscious and I disable most of the G apps anyway.

   
   

I have a non rooted xt1032 MotoG 1st gen on lollipop 5.0.2 in the UK .

Any help on this dilemma would be greatly appreciated.