8 Tips for Mobile App Security
WRITTEN BY THE KIUWAN TEAMExperienced developers, cyber-security experts, ALM consultants, DevOps gurus and some other dangerous species. According to a report from IBM just a few years ago, as many as 50% of companies had no budget for mobile app security. This is especially worrying because, in the first half of 2019 alone, there were data breaches that exposed around 4.1 billion records. A more recent study also showed that 3 out of 4 apps leaked sensitive data that exposed users to fraud and identity theft. Incidences of app data breaches are increasing at an alarming rate, undermining consumer trust in mobile app safety. App users trust you enough to share their sensitive data on your platform, and the responsibility of ensuring the app is secure falls on leaders of mobile app development teams. This begs the question, how do you ensure that the users of your app are protected against data breaches? Here are 8 approaches to securing your mobile application. 1. Add an extra layer of security to the login process The Verizon 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report showed that approximately 80% of all data breaches occur due to weak credentials. This is why you need to put identification, authentication, and authorization measures in place. Use authorization technology or adopt the 2FA (two-factor authentication) method to add an extra layer of security to the login process. Biometrics such as fingerprints and retina scans are some recent authentication methods, which are more reliable than the 2FA. You should also encourage your app users to set strong passwords and update them regularly or ask the developers to design the app to only accept strong alphanumeric passwords. 2. Conduct vulnerability testing If hackers were to attack your app today, how well would it hold up? No one ever thinks that their app could be a hacker’s target — until it is. As part of a mobile development team, you are bound to be biased and are wired to assume that your app is extremely secure. However, you should never leave mobile app security to chance, which is why you should conduct vulnerability testing periodically. Identify all security loopholes in your app’s infrastructure and fix them before it’s too late. You will require an effective application vulnerability scanning with a tool like Kiuwan, which supports Swift, Java, Kotlin, and Objective-C. 3. Secure your app’s code from the ground up Your app’s security doesn’t begin after deployment of the application; it should be part of the development process. Make security a priority and protect your code from vulnerabilities that are often caused by developer error or lack of testing. To protect your mobile app’s code, keep it encrypted through minification and obfuscation coupled with API encryption. Run source code scanning and ensure that your security measures don’t affect the user experience and the app’s performance. 4. Implement a good data encryption policy Ensure that all data being exchanged on your app is encrypted. This way, even if hackers get past your security, they won’t access any sensitive information. Avoid storing sensitive data on mobile devices or on your servers, and if it’s necessary, keep the data storage to an absolute minimum and in an encrypted format. For instance, the iOS keychain contains encrypted data storage. If you keep logs, make sure they are […]
