7 Tips to Ensure Mobile Application Security

Human dependence on mobile devices and applications has reached an inevitable stage. For both personal use and business operations, the presence of a mobile application to manage tasks on the go has kept convenience and comfort as two main factors. Considering the modern world and its needs, a mobile app is needed for shopping, ordering, video conferencing, chat, instant messaging, taxi services, mobile banking, online money transfer, live streaming of programs and much more.

According to Techjury.net, mobile users have increased more than 10 percent in the past year, and mobile devices now account for over 51 percent of all time online in the United States.

With the rapid growth of the mobile application industry, companies and organizations around the world are adopting this technology to improve customer communications and employee productivity. However, as the uses and demands for more sophisticated mobile applications increase, hacking and cyber attacks have also increased. To ensure the security of mobile applications, it is necessary to take into account some very important factors such as end-to-end encryption, sharing of zero passwords, asymmetric keys, etc. with the latest tools and best practices which we will talk about in depth. They deal with application security along with other factors to deliver cost-effective and fail-safe applications.

Best practices for Mobile application security

Authorized API’s

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are tools that help programmers in software development. APIs are an important aspect of backend development, but they can be a security nightmare because they often interact with the outside world. For added security, professionals recommend approving APIs centrally.

Source code encryption

Because most of the code in a native mobile app resides on the client side, mobile malware can easily spot bugs and weaknesses in source code and design. Take, for example, the well-known Facebook, where a hacker’s alleged attack on Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ WhatsApp account attracted a lot of attention.

Developers must ensure that their applications are robust enough to prevent reverse engineering and tampering attacks. Source code encryption is an ideal technique to protect your software from these threats, as it ensures that it is unreadable.

Data transmission security

Data breaches and theft are protected from confidential information transmitted from client to server. VPNs, SSL, TLS can help protect data in transit and encrypt it between source and recipient. This ensures the security of the mobile application.

Employ the current cryptography technique

Popular cryptographic algorithms such as MD5 and SHA1 have proved ineffective for today’s security needs. It is best not to encrypt the keys, as this makes them easier to steal.

Keep your keys in safe containers and don’t keep them on the device. For hashing, use only the latest and most trusted APIs, such as AES 256-bit encryption and SHA256.

To make mobile applications secure, you should also run manual penetration tests and threat models on your applications before they are activated.

Frequent testing

It doesn’t matter how well you have protected your application because protecting your application is a never-ending task. New threats arise that require the development of new solutions. Before each deployment, it was standard practice to test the application against a set of randomly created security scenarios. Penetration testing, and even this repeatedly, is the key to the security of foolproof mobile apps.

Reduce testing

Mobile applications require different permissions to access hardware and function properly. To reduce the spread of malware on mobile devices, it is necessary to request the necessary permissions to access only the essential features to reduce the number of connections the application has.

Use of Multi-factor Authentication

Hackers have a unique opportunity to access sensitive data when there is no authentication step for added security. Users can easily fall victim to malicious activities resulting in the loss of their confidential data. Multi-factor authentication is a powerful weapon in the fight against cybercrime. To log into a device or application, multi-factor authentication requires entering a secret code in addition to the password. This code can be sent by SMS, biometric system, email or Google Authenticator.

Non-reliable & third party libraries

Developers often embed some freely available bits of code to perform their coding tasks. But it’s important to understand that it’s not always safe to incorporate these codes. The GNU C library, for example, has a security weakness that allows hackers to remotely execute malicious code and damage a system. To protect their applications from library vulnerabilities, developers must use limited internal repositories and implement policy controls during capture.

Concluding with

Mobile application development is a huge task. Developing an application and its security is a simultaneous activity to safeguard and protect the application from malware and malicious activity. Desktop applications are now a thing of the past as mobile applications are rapidly taking their place. It is very important to keep the above tips in mind when building simple to complex applications, as these tips provide assurance of secure application access.

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