8 Tips for Better Mobile Application Security (for developers)

According to a survey conducted by the California based cyber security company Risk IQ, the increased negligence about mobile security is putting Us consumers’ personal information and devices at risk. The survey brought in 1,000 respondents and among them 36% respondents are not worried about app details like app developers, reviews and updates. And 47% of respondents don’t look into privacy policy and permissions before downloading the app. This is making the things easier for hackers.

Today a majority of online transactions are done through mobile. In 2015 itself, 45% of online transactions were done through mobile, subsequently 61% of hacking attempts originated from mobile devices. 66% of respondents clicked on ads that were used to promote mobile apps, movies and games. And around 60% of respondents went into email links, website and social media feed to download apps, movies and games.

Today mobile users are becoming the victims of online frauds. Downloading the apps without inspecting the details like reviews and developers is one of the key reasons behind it. Sometime people download the apps mistakenly thinking that the app is of the brand or original company. For example, downloading the Guide Pokemon or Fandom: Pokemon game thinking that it is developed by Ni-antic Inc., the developers of Pokemon Go.

So if you’re a developers or business owner and very serious about your app security, below are top tips that help you develop a secure app and secure it forever.

3Result-oriented Ways to Secure Your Mobile App

Secure your app code from the ground

App security should be your utmost concern from the day one of app development. Top mobile apps development is not like web apps where data and software exist securely on a server, but in mobile app, code stays on the device once it’s downloaded, which makes it more accessible to malicious activities compared to web apps.

Tips:

Secure app code with encryption. Obfuscation and minification are the common measures used to make app code secret and hard to read. But these are not enough, you should consider modern, well-supported algorithms blended with API encryption.
Test code against vulnerabilities, or scan source code
Craft code as agile as possible. Reason behind this is simple. You should be able to port the protected app code between devices and operating systems and that should be even easy to patch and update.
When adding security to the app, keep these things in mind: file size, runtime memory, performance, and data and battery usage, why because this should not hamper app performance and user experience.

Secure your network connections on the backend

To secure data and avoid unauthorized access, servers and cloud servers that your app’s APIs are accessing should have a proper security measures. There should be a proper verification of APIs. So it can avoid eavesdropping on important information that are transferred from the client back to the server and database of the app.

Tips:

Get the help of a network security specialist, so he can conduct penetration testing and vulnerability assessments of your network. It helps youmake sure the right data is secured in the right ways.
To securely storing your data and documents, you can implement containerizationwhichis a method of creating encrypted containers.
Implement database encryption and encrypted connections with a VPN, SSL, or TLS for an additional layer of security

Pay a special focus for identification, authentication and authorization measures

You should have a rigorous login process from the backend, not from the front end, to avoid unauthorized access to the account. It means user shouldn’t be forced to go through multiple steps (or pages) to logging into account which spoils user experience, instead you should secure the login process from the backend. Tips to achieve it are as follows:

Tips:

Have a rigorous security measures if your app depends on someone else’s API for functionality.
Implement OAuth2 protocol for having secure connections via user-specific, one-time tokens.It lets you grant user permissions between the client and end users, where it gathers credentials like 2-factor SMS questions.
Use JSON web tokens for encrypted data exchange
Use OpenID Connect federation protocol which lets users reuse their same credentials across multiple domains with an ID token

Conclusion:

I hope the above info will help you make sure your app is protected from hackings and malware. You can have better results regards to app security with a support of well-experienced mobile app development companies Mumbai who can take care of all these things.