One of the challenges when developing mobile applications Is security. Whenever you create a mobile app for a company, you need to make sure that it is protected against any kind of cyber attack. If there is a security breach, the company in question can suffer a bad reputation.
If you don’t keep user data secure, it could be manipulated or stolen and misused. A poorly secured application can also be infected by a virus, or even cloned. Your efforts would benefit people with bad intentions, who would have been happy to play on your security weaknesses.
Here are 6 tips to help you protect the application from data breaches:
Eliminating server-side vulnerabilities
Any communication between an application and a user that takes place outside of a cell phone is primarily done using a server. These servers are a prime target for hackers computer science.
Sometimes the developer does not take precautions on the server side, which is when security problems arise. Sometimes vulnerabilities arise from cross-platform development and compilation, which can also lead to security problems.
Start by scanning your applications with an automatic scanner: you will be informed about vulnerabilities that may affect your application. If you don’t do this, hackers will start with this and easily find the flaws to hack your application.
If you don’t know how to fix these vulnerabilities, you can hire a security professional.
Securing data storage
If the data stored by users is easily accessible, manipulable and usable, your application is vulnerable to data leakage. Hackers are fond of this information, which is sometimes sold on the black market at a high price. The damage to the reputation of a company, or its application, is often terrible.
In addition to the existing encryption provided by the operating system, you can add a second layer of encryption on these sensitive data: you will dramatically increase the security of your application!
Consider strong authentication for better cybersecurity
This is one of the most important security points: a low level of authentication can lead to vulnerabilities in your mobile application.
Classic authentication is of course password driven, so it is essential that you have a strong password policy, so that it cannot be easily hacked.
With multi-factor authentication, you can make your application even more secure. Also consider that you can offer your users to do this using biometrics.
Prevent client-side injection to protect from malware attacks
Just as we talked about, the security of information on both the client and server side must be protected at all costs. But there is also a possibility of executing malicious code on the client side.
In fact, there are malicious bots that grab the malicious code into the mobile application by various means. Most of the time, the mobile application processes this code like any other data that exists on that device. During processing, this code will cause a context switch and the software can reinterpret any data as executable data. This data may be processed as part of the users’ access and usage rights.
In addition, client-side injection can be done via binary attacks. You can guard against such injection vulnerabilities by identifying the input sources. Then, identify the data provided by the user or the application, and submit this data for validation, which prohibits code injection. In addition, you can analyze the code to verify that the application is handling the supplied data correctly, to ensure the security of the application.
Provide fewer privileges
This goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway, for the security of your application’s code itself. Only give access to the code to those who need it: no one else should have access to the different files your application, and user privileges should be kept to a minimum.
Test software and hardware regularly
The final tip for keeping your application at a high level of security is to test repeatedly all the points mentioned in this article. It is important that you stay on top of security trends to secure your application.
A small test at regular intervals will help you to better detect if any vulnerabilities have appeared.
The tips listed above are only the mobile security basics. At the end of 2018, there were more than 30 million pieces of malware aimed at mobile devices. This number is growing steadily. Don’t hesitate to hire a professional to secure your app!
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