Tips for Mobile App Security

As the numbers above show an alarming situation, there are few security breaches that an app developer should keep in mind to think about keeping their mobile apps secure. You can follow these top while developing your mobile applications.

• Secure Passwords: Passwords should be a mandate for all the user’s in order to provide high security to your mobile application. The password needs to have minimum complexity requirements- it should contain at least one character and combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. This improves the security of mobile app.
• App Data Access Permission: While installing mobile app, it asks the user permission to access some of your data such as files, contacts, hardware etc. So, while developing mobile app, ensure that you ask only the relevant information which is vital for your app. Requesting access to sensitive information may scare your users and they might hesitate to provide data in future.
• Good Mobile Encryption Policy: Data needs to be encrypted at each and every step- be it communication between app, any web services and backend server. Mobile apps handling private data should support end-to-end encryption.
• Updated Mobile Operating System: Companies should keep all the mobile operating systems up-to-date as the updated version always involve new security patches with some new features.
• Safe and Secure API: APIs flow a large amount of data between applications, cloud and users, all of whom needs to be verified and authorized to access that data. So, it is very necessary to build a safe and secure API.
• Bug Testing for App: App code should be tested in order to detect the vulnerabilities in the code that can be corrected before publishing the app out in the market.
• Disallow sideloading: Sideloaded apps do not undergo the normal security checks performed by the native stores. So users should be restricted from using sideloaded apps. A hacker can easily steal sensitive information of the consumers from such apps.