If you think your application is secure enough, think twice. A hacker can find loopholes in your app’s code and security system in not more than a couple of hours. Application security is not just another feature that you add to your app; rather it is a necessity. Your application code should be secured from the very first line, leaving no loopholes behind.
It is easier to solve a problem when you know where exactly the root cause lies. In the same way, when an application is developed, you cannot find the modules that are less secure. All you can do later is pay to a security firm to do some checks and cover up the loopholes. Therefore, to avoid ambiguities popping up later and affecting your customers’ experience, you should implement security measures while developing your mobile application.
A number of security measures are employed to curb the potential losses starting from the conceptualizing and development phase. For a mobile app developer, the best practices to ensure the security of an application include –
- Security In The Code
As we said, securing the application starts from the very first line of the code you write. Make sure that the code is free from bugs and vulnerabilities. The attackers use them to break into your application and reverse engineer your code to tamper it. The research shows that malicious code is affecting over 11.6 million mobile devices at any given time. Harden and complicate your code so it cannot be reverse engineered. You need to test it repeatedly and fix bugs whenever they are found.
- Encryption Will Bring Peace of Mind
The data being transferred from your application is your valuable asset. You have to encrypt your inter-application communications so that when someone tries to hack that data all he gets is a vague alphabet soup with no meaning to anyone except those who have the key. This means, even if the data is stolen, the hacker will not be able to do anything with it.
- Choose Libraries Carefully
Test the code thoroughly with third-party libraries before embedding it in your app. Not all the libraries are robust enough for your app’s security. As a developer, you should utilize controlled internal repositories and exercise policy controls to protect your apps from vulnerable libraries.
- Integrate Authorized APIs
API’s are of two types i.e. authorized and unauthorized. Make sure that the APIs you use in your application are authorized. The unauthorized APIs are not coded properly which means they are more likely to be hacked.
- Increase the Levels of Authentication
If a registered user’s account is hacked, who do you think is responsible for that? The developer is because he did not implement enough barriers to block any possible intrusion in the first place. Secondly, he did not compel his customer to use high authorization security credentials. These were both his responsibilities. We agree to the fact that a large part of this depends on the end users of your application, but as a developer, you can encourage your users to be more sensitive towards authentication.
- Enable Tamper-Detection Technologies
Some tactics are used to trigger an alert when someone tries to tamper with your code or inject a malicious code. The tamper detection can be applied to make sure that if any such activity takes place, the code stops functioning at all.
- Use the Principle of Least Privilege
The principle of least privilege says that a code should only run with the permissions it truly needs to perform specific operations. Your app should not ask for more privileges than the minimum required. If your app has nothing to do with user’s contacts, camera, microphone or GPS, do not ask for them. Do not make unnecessary network connections.
- Optimized Session Handling
“Sessions” last much longer on mobiles than on desktops. As a result, it makes session handling difficult for the server. Make use of tokens in place of device identifiers to identify a session. This is of great help because tokens can be revoked at any time, making them more secure in case of lost and stolen devices. You should also deploy remote wiping of data from a lost/stolen device as well as the remote lockdown.
- Cryptography Tools and Techniques
Cryptography tools and techniques are the best friends of app developers for effective key management. Do not hardcode your keys and store them locally on the user device. To meet up modern-day security standards, integrate most trusted APIs, such as 256-bit AES encryption with SHA-256 for hashing.
- Test, Test, and Test
There are some white hat hackers, who are authorized to make continuous attacks on the application, to make sure that the application is secure enough. By hiring a white hat hacker, you invest in penetration testing, threat modeling, and emulators to test your apps rigorously for vulnerabilities and fix the issues with each update and patches when required.
Your mobile app security is important. Make sure you live up to the expectations while developing a mobile app. There are experts from reputed mobile app development companies to help you in embedding the latest security features in the mobile app. If needed, do not shy away from seeking their help.
