Top 5 Mobile Application Security Best Practices for Programmers

Mobile Application Security isn’t a perk or an added benefit – it is a denude necessity. One cyber security breach could undermine your bus...

Mobile Application Security isn’t a perk or an added benefit – it is a denude necessity. One cyber security breach could undermine your business, resulting in millions of dollars in losses. That’s why security should be a concern from the beginning.

In the middle of developing the most entertaining, innovative, and convenient apps, millions of dollars were stolen through a breach in security. Today, if you look at how we interact with our smartphones and apps, you’ll see that all kinds of information about us are floating around in the air, accessible to a whole bunch of cybercriminals.

We can give cybercriminals our address, phone number, personal information, and even where we are right now, within a few meters. Enterprise apps exchange with highly sensitive information are the prime target and that attackers are constantly looking for.

Top 5 Mobile Application Security Best Practices for Programmers

Mobile app developers need to do all they can to avoid inadvertently disclosing confidential information about their clients to attackers. Here are five ways they can do it.

1. Excessive Testing

Securing your newly built mobile application requires continuous testing. You need to invest in penetration testing, threat modeling, and emulation to discover and fix any vulnerabilities in your app as they arise. You also need to release patches when necessary.

Security will become a bigger differentiator in the success of apps than usability or aesthetics in the coming years, as we saw with WannaCry and other memorable breaches of 2017.

By using reputed and effective mobile app security testing tools like Pradeo and many others will make it easier for your clients and users to trust your app and will help you keep your mobile application security at an optimum level.

2. Use Strong Cryptography Tools

Keep your keys in a secure container and never store them on the device. Never hard-code your keys because that makes them easy to steal. Store your keys in a secure container. AES 256-bit encryption and the SHA-256 hash algorithm have proved more secure than some widely accepted cryptographic protocols. Stick to the latest, most trusted APIs like MD5 and SHA1 and use TLS 1.3.

3. Write a Secure Code

Research shows that malicious code is affecting nearly 11.62 million mobile devices at any given time due to bugs and vulnerabilities. Hackers use a public copy of your application to get into any app.

Build your code with security in mind from the beginning and make it difficult to break, obfuscate and minify your code to prevent reverse engineering. Test repeatedly for bugs and fix them as they arise. You should design your code so that it is easy to update and patch. You should also ensure your code is "agile" so that it can be easily updated at the user's end after an intrusion. Don't forget code hardening and code signing.

4. Authorized APIs Usage

Unauthorized APIs and loosely coded APIs may unintentionally grant hackers access that could be misused gravely. For instance, caching authorization information helps programmers reuse authorization information when making API calls. However, APIs open a way for attackers to gain access through a loophole. For this reason, experts recommend that APIs be authorized centrally.

5. Encrypt Data

All data that is transmitted over the app must be encrypted. Encryption transforms plain text into an alphabet soup that has no meaning for anyone except those who know the key. This ensures that even if the data is stolen, it can’t be read by criminals and misused.

You can understand the power of data encryption by looking at organizations like the NSA and FBI that have been found requesting permission to access iPhones and decrypt WhatsApp messages. If the agencies can’t decode them themselves, likely hackers can’t either.