Mobile Application Security – Is your Mobile App is Secure?

Mobile Application Industry is rapidly growing where you will find mobile app for doing almost everything in daily life. Mobile App User provide privacy sensitive data through these Apps and it is responsibility of App development companies to protect customer data.

Mobile Application Security focuses on the Software Security posture of mobile apps on various platforms like Android, iOS and Windows phone. All popular mobile platforms provide security controls designed to help Software Developer build secure application.

Every year millions of applications are developed but less than 1% of the applications are commercially successful. Even though these apps are extremely efficient in day-to-day transactions but there is always a big concern about the data safety and security.

Once you download mobile applications you are not sure what they can extract from your phone. Most of the users save their personal data, password, contact and photos which can be sent by mobile apps without user’s knowledge. Hackers can reverse engineer the application to get the valuable information or they can tamper with the source code or they can insert malicious code. Any of these forms can have severe consequences.

There are many mobile applications available in market but not all of them are bug-free and easy to use. Below image gives you the Mobile app Security and Privacy issues from Top brands in the year 2020

Mobile Application Security Testing involves testing a mobile app in ways that a malicious user would try to attack it. Effective Security Testing begins with an understanding of application’s business purpose and the types of data it handles. From there a combination of Static Analysis, Dynamic Analysis and Penetration testing results in an efficient holistic assessment to find vulnerabilities that would be missed if the techniques are not used together effectively.

A good security testing tool can secure your application against Static analysis using multiple code hardening techniques such as Name Obfuscation, Encryption, Call Hiding, Control flow Obfuscation, Removal of Android logging Code and so on. As well this tool will secure against Dynamic Analysis and live attacks using various runtime self-protection mechanisms such as Certificate Checks, SSL pinning, Root detection, Tamper Detection, Hook Detection and Debugger and emulator checks.

Penetration testing is a simulated attack on your mobile app, web server, firewall or other online resources. Penetration testing aims at finding and exploiting the already known but unpatched security issues. This testing ensures that discovered vulnerabilities are not false positives.

A Mobile app that is easily subject to attacks cannot be expected to be popular among users. Below are some of the top security considerations for Mobile Applications:

  1. Cryptography

  2. Authentication and Authorization

  3. Security as Code

  4. Code Tampering Prevention

Below are some of the security practices:

  1. Maintaining TLS encryption throughout the entire application

  2. Proper up to date connectivity and security libraries

  3. Making sure of our application only asks for the permissions necessary

  4. Following OWASP security test guidelines for iOS and Android for further practices

Overall, the security vulnerabilities we face can seem impossible to avoid. However, there are plenty of solutions for securing our application from cyber-attacks. Regular updates of the Software will keep our applications with the latest available security implementations. OWASP has developed a Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (MASVS) to establish security guidelines in the field of Mobile App Security.

Concluding this I would say it is critical that these safety protocols are followed by both developers and customers to address any Mobile Security threats. In order to keep safe from scammers and cyber attackers we should make sure to verify the legitimacy of not only apps but also web pages and any calls we receive. Meteonic is premium partner for many niche software solutions. For more information on these tools and how these tools work please visit https://meteonic.com/solution