Mobile App Security: A Complete Guide

September 27, 2017 Shashank Mehrotra 2580 Views
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Do you have a mobile phone? Stupid question, right? Everyone does! But how secure is yours?

Mobile apps have become increasingly complex with a single app providing a lot of functionalities to the users. Even with all of this complexity, the safety of apps remains an important issue. Many of the cyber crimes are associated with mobile apps. Confidential information stored in one app may be accessible by other apps and if that happens, the information can be misused leading to severe losses. Hence it is important to address this issue.

As app developers, this issue is even more pressing, hence here are a few suggestions for you to ensure that your app is as safe as it could be:

Encrypt Code
The first step towards ensuring that your mobile app remains safe and secure is by making sure that the code is safe. This can be done by encrypting the code so that it is hard to read(or ask a doctor to write it). The classical means of encryption were good but in this modern world, there are ways to counter those encryption techniques easily, hence use only modern algorithms which can be coupled with some API encryption. Additionally, test the code again and again for vulnerabilities even if app store approves your app to be secure.

Secure Backend
The backend is as important as the frontend is, if not more, when it comes to securing the app properly. Servers being accessed by the APIs of the app should be secure in order to prevent unauthorized access to protect data. Hence there should be some sort of verification for APIs as well as those accessing them in order to prevent any sort of eavesdropping that can be done on sensitive information being passed back and forth on the channel between the client and the server or database. Containerization is a good way of ensuring the security of the server. VPNs might also help. But don’t rely solely on any single means. It is always better to switch between multiple options.

Plan Strategically
A good plan leads to a secure app. ALWAYS.
While planning, consider various aspects of your app and check whether each of them is sound in terms of security or not. Also, keep in mind that some apps interact with each other. In these apps, it is necessary to ensure that the confidential information present in those apps remains confidential even when it is used by some other app. Moreover, from code to data to the transmission channel to the device in question, everything must be secure. As developers, the device is something which is hard to ensure in terms of security. But the code and the data, and also the channel must be secure at all times. Using latest algorithms for securing each of these sections and updating the methods of security every time something new comes up is a good way of ensuring that your app remains secure. So plan it well and after planning, ask yourself four questions,
“Is the code secure?”
“Is the data secure?”
“Is the channel secure?”
“Is the device secure?”
If the answer of any of these questions is negative, work on your app. And keep working till the answer to all of these is positive.

BrainMobi is a leading mobile app development company known far and wide for the amount of security our team of top mobile app developers brings to the apps we develop. Our research and development team works constantly to stay updated about the latest tools and techniques that can be used to make the apps even more secure. Contact us at sales@brainmobi.com for a free quote.

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danielcraig Shashank was the Co-founder of BrainMobi and was working as IT Business Analyst, leading the Marketing and Business Analysis division along with Operations at BrainMobi. Shashank loves to write about emerging technologies, mobile innovation, user experience and the way it shapes our world so that users can access the best tips in mobile app development.