How To Improve Security Of Your Mobile App?

Does your business aspire to build and launch a mobile app in the extremely crowded, over-competitive market? Well, to stand apart from the competition, having robust security is the bare minimum condition that mobile app development services follow for app projects, especially if it belongs to an operational business. 

Just like security, maintaining data privacy for the users and customers is equally an important consideration for successful app project execution. To make things clear in a better light, let’s mention the instances and moments when an app exposes its security flaws. Here below we provide a brief list of them. 

• ● Passcode or security lock getting compromised. 
• ● Data leaks from the app. 
• ● Interception of app information. 
• ● The reverse-engineered clone app is making rounds in the market. 
• ● Frequent app crashes and little performance flaws. 
• ● Intellectual properties, app code, and other assets were compromised. 
• ● Instances of identity theft or fraudulent transactions by others by using user authentication. 

Any security flaws can put the reputation of your app in danger and hence from early on you need to give maximum priority to the app security measures. Here below we provide some of the most trusted and tried measures to optimize app security. 

Encrypt the source code of the app

Smartphone malware often injects threatening bugs and security vulnerabilities right in the app's source code. Several credible reports tell that millions of smartphone devices get infected by malicious code. As soon as the malware infection takes place, the security of the source code is compromised. 

This is why encrypting the source code is an extremely important task to provide security safeguards from malware. Some popular technologies like JavaScript are very easy to read and copy by the malware and it is a widely used programming language across platforms. 

Enforcing robust multi-factor authentication

The vast majority of security compromises happen mainly because of feeble authentication measures. This is one of the reasons why an app should always give attention to enforcing a multi-factor authentication right in the beginning of the project. 

Remember, authentication doesn’t only refer to passwords. Even passwords can be made stronger and vulnerable-proof by enforcing certain password creation rules such as mandatory periodic changes, mandatory use of strong passwords with alphanumeric characters, not allowing to use one password twice, etc. 

Multi-factor authentication is another proven way to enforce strong authentication measures. Apart from making users use phone numbers and email addresses for authentication, making them answer some secret questions or authenticating through another device registered with the same ID can be helpful. 

Carry out penetration test diligently 

There can be hardly any alternative to stringent security checks and tests to evaluate vulnerabilities and address them from time to time. Though every app does spiritual tests and checks, they often forget to make it all too often for better control on security measures. 

Among all the security tests, penetration testing is particularly effective for mobile apps. Penetration tests help an app project to detect the flaws that can be manipulated by malware attacks and hackers. 

Give attention to a Backend security 

The client side and server side of an app project ultimately make an app allowing user interactions on the client-side or front end and making the background responses through servers or the backend. 

Most apps just leave the backend without enough security cover creating many vulnerabilities. Since servers use APIs to make certain services available to the users through front end, securing the server side by using secure APIs and taking care of secure authentication of APIs are extremely important. 

Store sensible data as little as possible 

Since apps face security vulnerabilities mainly due to sensitive business data and mission-critical data remaining the key target of hackers, you need to avoid storing such data in the app. 

Instead of storing the data in the local memory of the app, developers should use keychains or encrypted containers for the storage. As an extra security measure, frequent removal of logs from the app can also reduce security risks. 

Additional measures for BYOD policy

The ‘Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) represents a trending policy across organizations that allow employees to use their smartphones during duty hours for official communication and collaboration. Obviously, this has negative security implications on any app project. 

To tackle the evolving security challenges for companies having BYOD policy, there are certain practices such as Mobile Device Management (MDM). For any company allowing employees to use their phones for business purposes, and enforcing MDM can be highly effective. 

Scanning the app code 

Scanning the app code for detecting traces of malware infections and security flaws is a major practice to protect your app from security vulnerabilities and threats. There are certain app scanning software solutions that help scan the code and detect security issues. 

These tools also help analyze the security flaws right at the time when the code is written by the developers. These tools mainly detect security flaws in the code as defined through the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) protocol. Through these tools, developers get feedback instantly about the security flaws in the app code. 

Such continuous code testing processes and tools ultimately enforce security measures all through the development cycle allowing frequent iterations from the developers in order to secure the code. 

Summing It Up 

Since mobile app security has become a burning concern for both app developers and users worldwide, app projects all over the world are taking security measures seriously for safeguarding user interests and business interests. But the security risks and vulnerabilities are also multiplying with every passing day and are getting more sophisticated. This is why it is no longer enough to take a couple of security measures. It needs a more concerted and encompassing effort now.