Mobile App Security: How to Counter Data Security Issues?
Mobile apps collect a substantial amount of user data which is used and processed by businesses to perform certain marketing activities, improve their services, and make the user experience more personalized. Apart from collecting personal information such as the user’s name, email, and address, some apps also request access to the device components such as camera, contacts, storage, location, and microphone. While some are necessary, some are inessential. For instance, a cab booking app like Uber would require access to your location, which is fine, but if it starts asking permission for microphone or camera, you, as a user, might be a little bit concerned. Although apps do seek the user’s consent, the level of access to personal data can cause disquiet among users if they get to know what goes behind the scenes. Mobile app security thus becomes inevitable because if the user data goes into the wrong hands, it can cause severe damage.
Symantec did a case study on the top 100 free Android and iOS apps and found out that 46 of them required camera access while 45 requested access for location. The study also revealed that 89% of the Android apps request risky permissions as compared to only 39% of its OS counterpart. By risky permissions, they meant the app requests that involve sensitive user data and which could affect the user’s stored data or the operation of other apps.
Mobile App Security: How to Secure Apps?
Nevertheless, what you should do as app developers is ensure that the user data remains secure and the required data privacy compliances are followed to give users better control over their personal information being used and shared. This is what mobile app security is all about, i.e., to protect the application from external threats that possess potential risks to a user’s personal and financial information. As mobile apps have become vulnerable to data theft or data breaches, you must implement strict security controls during app development in order to prevent it and secure your app. Hackers try to get the app access and steal user information through various means, such as through reverse engineering and use it for malicious activities. Therefore, app developers must be extra cautious while they build an Android or iOS app. Here’s how you can accomplish it.
1. Data Encryption
Data encryption, one of the widely used data security methods used by enterprises, is a way to convert readable data into a form that cannot be read by others. Once encrypted, it can only be decrypted using a secret key. So even if the data gets stolen or the hackers get access to it, it would be of no use as they won’t be able to do anything with it until it is decrypted. Adopting this mobile app security practice during development will pave the way for safe and secure customer data.
2. Write a Solid and Secure Source Code
Hackers would try to get access to the source code and tamper with it in order to break into an application. They might even get away with it if it is vulnerable. App developers, therefore, must ensure that the source code written is highly protected and cannot be broken easily. Do not leave any bugs in the coding structure as it will only make it easier for the attackers to force their way into the application and access all the sensitive data. Following an agile approach where the code is timely patched can be a great way to strengthen your source code. Moreover, make sure that only a few important people have the privilege to access the source code.
3. Authorized APIs
APIs come of great help to facilitate the app development process but they have been associated with cybersecurity risks in recent times. To be on the safer side, make sure to use only authorized APIs in your application code to integrate it with any third-party services. Implement them carefully.
4. High-Level Authentication
Making a mobile app highly secure requires a strong authentication process. Attackers may easily retrieve user data if the application possesses weak authentication. You can integrate two-factor authentication in the application that adds an extra layer of security to restrict unauthorized access. Here, users are asked to re-verify that they are the actual owner by providing the OTP on their contact number or email address, other than putting their password.
5. Minimal Permissions
Although permissions allow applications to operate more effectively, they make apps vulnerable to hackers’ attacks at the same time. As we mentioned earlier as well, it is totally understandable if apps request access to something that is needed for their functional area, but some apps seek permission that doesn’t seem to be of any use for its operation, yet they ask for it.
Keep the app permissions to a minimum; only those which are absolutely necessary.
6. Avoid Asking to Save Passwords
It is often seen that apps ask users to save their passwords once they sign-up or register on the app, to save them from the trouble of remembering the password and entering it again every time they log in. This does make things easy for the users but can be very risky in case of mobile theft. Users’ passwords can be harvested to get access to their sensitive information. Moreover, these passwords aren’t usually encrypted which adds extra risk to it. To prevent any mishappening with the user data in case of mobile theft, app developers should refrain from integrating this functionality in the application. Instead, the password can b saved on the app server, so that users could change it by signing in to the server, even if the device gets stolen.
7. Be Careful With Third-Party Libraries
Developers often use third-party libraries for code building and to ease the development process. Though some might be trustworthy and advantageous, some can turn out to be harmful. These insecure libraries may call for an open invitation to attackers to crash the system using malicious codes. It is suggested that you always test the code of the third-party libraries before implementing it into your application and use only a limited number of them. Also, during procurement, you should use controlled internal repositories and disciplinary policy controls. This works as a shield for mobile apps and saves them from vulnerabilities in external libraries.
8. Update Periodically
An application developed using modern techniques will get outdated after a certain point in time. The code won’t be as strong as when the app was initially developed, which would expose it to threats again. With time, new threats emerge too which can cause damage to the device if they aren’t patched on time. It is, therefore, important that the application is regularly updated. Not only it helps you get rid of the existing security issues and make the application more strong and secure but enhancing or updating codes periodically also ensures that the app is in line with the latest security trends and user expectations.
9. Penetration Testing
Penetration testing can prove to be highly useful to track vulnerabilities in your application and safeguard it. It tends to find the potential threats or weaknesses that attackers might use to tamper with the application security. Penetration testing checks for unencrypted data, weak password policy, third-party permissions, etc., and help you determine the weak areas in your app by recreating the act of a potential attacker. This testing should be done regularly to keep the app secure. You can also include white box testing and black-box testing in this.
10. Enforce Session Logout
Mobile app users often do not log out or forget logging out from the application. Although they do this to avoid the hassle of logging in every single time, apps must enforce a session log out if there hasn’t been any user activity for a while. Banking or payment apps must strictly consider this as it can be risky if an unauthorized user gets access to the device.
The Bottom Line
Weak mobile app security is an open threat for brands as well as app users. Alongside possessing risks of the misuse of users’ personal and financial information, it can also lead to IP theft and revenue loss for app owners as hackers in the past have been able to hack the premium features of an app, which is the source of revenue for most apps, and thus causing businesses a great loss.
Hackers are always searching for loopholes in mobile app security, so it is your responsibility to take strict security measures and make data transmission over the internet, secure. Don’t just focus on making the app accessible to users but also take data security into account.
If you want to build secure and data-compliant mobile apps, our app development experts can help you with it. You can reach out to us here.
Originally published at https://www.dewsolutions.in on September 6, 2021.
