Ways To Secure Your Mobile Application

Mobile-app security breaches can potentially harm an entire operating system, so it is essential to ensure mobile app security from data theft. It’s not easy to identify a threat in mobile apps and define its security level. However, with a company’s reputation and users’ personal information at stake, developers need to do everything in their power to secure mobile apps ensure that users’ are protected from external intrusions.

Keep reading if you’re wondering how mobile application security works and how to protect mobile applications with mobile application security best practices.

WRITE A SECURE CODE

The easiest way to ensure the security of mobile apps for app developers is to write reliable code as it will help you protect your app from attackers. Attackers will try to tamper with your code and reverse engineer it, so make sure it is obfuscated and minified. Continuous mobile app security testing and fixing bugs is also important in order to have secure code.

If your code does happen to get breached, make sure that it is agile so you can easily update it.

BE EXTRA CAUTIOUS WITH LIBRARIES

While using third-party libraries can make mobile development much easier, such an approach does come with certain consequences. To ensure ultimate mobile application security, it is recommended that you test the code before using it in an app when relying on third-party libraries. Other good advice is to limit the number of libraries used in a code, as well as to have a policy on how to handle them.

Having an established policy of using such third-party elements can help you ensure mobile app security more easily.

RUN THE BEST ENCRYPTION TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

In simple terms, encryption means that even if data is stolen from the data storage, there’s nothing criminals can read and misuse. Because of this, it is crucial that you make sure that every single part of data in your code is encrypted.

Even big companies and organizations, such as the FBI, have trouble getting past encrypted pieces of data, so hackers will certainly have a difficult time as well.

USE AUTHORIZED APIS ONLY

Developers quite often rely on using APIs as they make their job a lot easier. However, APIs can be susceptible to external breaches as well. Therefore, it is recommended that APIs are authorized centrally for maximum security. APIs that aren’t authorized and are loosely coded can unintentionally grant hacker privileges.

For maximum security, make sure that your APIs are authorized centrally.

USE HIGH-LEVEL AUTHENTICATION

Authentication refers to the use of passwords and other personal identifiers. Interestingly, some of the biggest security vulnerabilities happen due to weak authentication. To ensure maximum protection of your mobile devices and apps from security issues, it is important to use strong multifactor authentication.

When it comes to passwords, you can use several techniques recommended by security experts to ensure mobile app security, such as:

  • Dual-factor authentication;
  • Modern authentication methods, such as retina or fingerprint scanning.

DEPLOY TAMPER-DETECTION TECHNOLOGIES

If hackers can access your code, they can try to modify it or tamper with it in different ways in order to gain access to personal data. However, there are ways to combat such practices. For example, active tamper detection can be deployed to make sure that the code will not function at all if modified.

Developers use these techniques to make sure they get notified when someone tries to modify their code or inject a malicious code.

USE THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST PRIVILEGE

If you’re not already familiar with the principle of least privilege, it’s a principle that dictates that a code should run with only the permissions it absolutely needs. This principle is also applicable to every facet of the IT industry, including the end user, systems, processes, networks, applications, and many more.

For example, the principle of least privilege means that an app shouldn’t require access to all the photos in your library, private information, or your contacts, nor should it make unnecessary network connections.

USE THE BEST CRYPTOGRAPHY TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Due to rapid development of technology, some of the most popular cryptographic algorithms are no longer as effective as they used to be. This means that you should always stay updated on the latest cryptography tools and techniques to prevent security threats.

As far as cryptography goes, in order to ensure mobile app security, you should follow safe key management: store keys in secure containers and never ever store them locally on the user’s device.

PERFORM A THOROUGH QA AND SECURITY CHECK

Mobile application security is a process that never ends. New security threats emerge and new solutions are needed. Whether you work in a company or you’re a freelance developer, running security checks is a necessary part of a high-quality development process. Not only will you develop an secure app that users will love to use, you will also gain business credibility.

So, make sure to constantly run code and security checks.

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