In this era of digital advancements, the growing technological trends in business are making us keep our finger on the pulse. One of the trends is – mobile apps. The time has noticed an exponential rise in the utilization of mobile apps over the years. According to the reports published by eMarketer, nearly 90% of users’ vast majority of mobile time is spent on apps while connected to the internet. With the upward trend of mobile apps usage, mobility app development has come to be known as one of the most promising and far-reaching industries.
Mobile apps have made our life much easier. Whether it comes to ordering food online, booking air tickets, or buying your favorite attire, everything is accessible over the fingertip. Having said that, the businesses are proposing to have a mobile for enhancing the accessibility of products and services while organically increasing the customer base.
There are many key ideas and strategies that play a significant role when it comes to business success, however, security is one of the particulars which is extremely crucial yet often overlooked by many organizations. When it comes to mobile apps, the security concern gets even bigger.
But how often we feel apprehensive of our personal data being compromised? We hardly do until something unfortunate takes place.
When an enterprise approaches a mobile app development company for the development of an app, they expect the final mobility solution to be completely secured and reliable. Therefore, it is the responsibility of developers to provide their users an end-to-end secured app that is far from the reach of phishers. App security is not just another advantage but a crucial necessity that could help businesses to gain customer trust and establish a valuable reputation.
The success of an app highly depends on its security. Here are five essential strategies using which developers can create secure mobile apps.
- An Application Code Must Be Secured.
It has been observed that most of the attackers can reverse engineer the app code and temper with the app details easily. Losing data or getting hacked, therefore, can have huge consequences not only for the users but app developers as well. The bugs and shortcomings in the apps invite intruders to easily break into the application. This is why writing a secure code is the elementary step if you want your app to be safe and secure. If required, go for the separate security team which can help you plan the security methods that could be integrated with the app code process.
- Encrypted Database and Essential Contents.
Either it comes to have a safe one-to-one interaction, exchange of data, or purchasing of products, the users want a safe app environment. In order to protect the relevant data to get leaked and compromised, the developers must pay heed to encryption. Encryption protects sensitive data by converting plaintext data into ciphertext which makes it difficult for cyberpunks to understand and decipher the data. With the burgeoning technology and functionalities, the online app distributors have come up with many APIs that allow developers to process the cryptographic mechanisms with secret keys that encrypt the databases and several essential contents.
- Developers Should Use Only Authorized Apis.
The programming interface in an app is another major component that developers should be concerned about while integrating the major security features. An application programming interface, commonly known as API, is an essential element of an app that helps the system forming a communication with back-end services. API keys play a vital role in making an application secure, efficient, and user-synced but it itself has to be secured in the first place. For apps of all sizes and shapes, the API turns out as an enhancing element for protecting user credentials. Since most businesses depend upon the endpoints, this is why securing API endpoints is crucial for protecting apps from any malicious attacks.
- Be Concerned With Third-Party App Stores.
According to McAfee mobile threat report, around 65k fake apps were detected in December 2019. Ever since the mobile app has witnessed a significant rise in terms of users, cybercriminals have become more active than before and zeroing in on the target data and critical data of the app. There are many third-party app stores in the market that have lucrative and newly discovered apps to sell to users some of which are the clone of already-successful applications such as Netflix, Whatsapp, etc. Such apps have secret keys installed that provide an avenue for hackers and they can easily take over the device. Hence, it is important for developers to choose authentic distributors such as Google Play and the App Store for the deployment of the app.
- Test Application Multiple Times.
The testing for an app is as important as revising all the significant key-points for the exam. Mobile application testing aids enterprises to catch any bugs, loopholes in the code and thus enable them to work in the favor of reducing any potential security risks which has the chances of stimulating phisher’s behavior. The ultimate goal of an app is to make it reach a wider audience and make it worthy of trust for an audience. Amidst the availability of countless applications, the users will lean more to a friendly, scalable, and high-quality application. Therefore, rigorous and continuous testing allows developers to meet the application requirements and make it ready-to-launch.
Creating a secure mobile app is challenging but these best-practice checklists can help developers integrate the safety functions whether it comes to iOS or Android app development.
