How To Build Highly Secure Mobile Apps for Business?

With the growing use of mobile devices worldwide, the number of apps released is rising at a fast pace. As the number of mobile apps and users increase, hackers see a lot of opportunities. Mobile apps are widely used for almost everything – banking, control Internet of Things devices remotely, tracking fitness, and more. It becomes essential to protect the security of the users. Every mobile application development company should take security into consideration once they develop a mobile app.

How does hacking affect your brand?

• Insert malware into the app or device. It can access the data and confidential information.
• Steal data for fraud and identity theft purposes.
• Access access to private business assets and intellectual property.
• Transfer sensitive information to unreliable sources.

If you are building a mobile app, you would need to think about how to secure your app, data and customer’s data. Here are some tips to help you:

• Secure the app code

Just like any other software, your mobile app security is of utmost importance. It is important for the app owners and developers to protect the application with encryption. The code of the mobile app should remain a secret, and difficult to read. Some of the common measure you can use are minification and obfuscation, but they’re not enough. You should use modern algorithms along with API encryption to protect your app.

It is important to test the app code for vulnerabilities and run source code scanning. If you have a team of dedicated mobile app developers, they should bear in mind runtime memory, file size, data, performance, and battery usage in mind while adding security to the application. Security of the app is something that cannot be ignored, but you should not compromise user experience and the performance of the mobile app.

• Secure your network connections

The servers and cloud servers that are accessed by the apps APIs should have strict security measures to protect the data and prevent unauthorized access. Another method to build encrypted containers for storing data securely is containerization.

You can choose to hire a network security expert to conduct vulnerability assessments. The specialists would be able to conduct penetration test for your network and ensure that the data is safe and secure.

• Plan for a strong API security strategy

Mobile development hinges on APIs and so, a large portion of securing mobile apps involves securing the APIs of the mobile app. A well planned API security stack includes authentication, identification, and authorization.

• Be careful about how customer data is secured

Mobile app owners should be mindful about how customer data is secured. As most of the mobile apps’ code and data is stored on the device, it is essential to implement a good mobile encryption policy. If your app is “leaky”, the customers’ data would be released to hackers and it can be risky.

The Bottom Line

There are no pre-defined security measures and there’s no one size that fits all when it comes to mobile app security. For instance, if you are planning to build a simple app for alarm clock, it would require very few security considerations as compared to a complex local-based application.

Blog Home