How to Build a Secure Mobile App? Top Things to Consider:

The number of mobile applications in the market has touched the new height. The availability of mobile apps for shopping, contacts, personal information, relevant projects, and future events attest to this. Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and Windows Store are leading online mobile app distributors. Mobile app development in Dubai is on its rise now. The good thing that mobile apps have filled many facets of our lives with ease and convenience. Apps are getting more important in our daily and professional lives. Nowadays apps can do plenty of things from executing financial transactions to uploading sensitive health data.

Top Things to Make Your Mobile App Secure
App entrepreneurs, as well as app developers, are in charge of mobile app security. They have to ensure that customer data is secure and safe from hacking attacks. Here we describe a mobile app security checklist to refer while building your mobile apps.

Source Code Encryption
As most of the code in a native mobile app is on the client-side, mobile malware can easily track the bugs and vulnerabilities within the source code and design. Attackers generally repack the renowned apps into the rogue app using the reverse-engineering technique. Then they upload those apps into third-party app stores with the intent to attract unsuspecting users. Developers should be careful while building an app and include tools to detect as well as address security vulnerabilities. Encrypting the source code can be an ideal way to defend your application from these attacks as it ensures it is unreadable.

Protect the Source Code
Mobile software security has to be a priority from day one. However, native apps tend to be more vulnerable to hacking attacks than web apps where data and software are stored on a server and a browser is just an interface. With native apps, however, the code is stored on the device once the app is installed making it more accessible for hackers. There could be lots of vulnerabilities in the app’s source code. Thus, network and data security components are important parts of mobile app security.

Tips and Tricks:

Protect app code with encryption. Encryption helps to keep the code secret and hard to read or copy.
Test code for vulnerabilities or carry out source code scanning to secure your phone app

Secure Network Connections
If the app accesses any servers or cloud servers, make sure that they have security measures in place to prevent unauthorized access and protect data. APIs and the servers accessing them should be verified and checked for any security risks.

Tips and Tricks:

Take advantage of containerization to create encrypted containers for storing data and documents
SSL, VPN, TLS, or HTTPS to protect the channel between a server and a user.

High-level Authentication

The lack of high-level authentication leads to security breaches. Developers should design the apps in such a way that it only accepts strong alphanumeric passwords. On top of that, it is better to make it mandatory for users to change their passwords periodically. For extremely sensitive apps, you can strengthen the security with biometric authentication using fingerprints or retina scan. Encouraging the users to ensure authentication would be the recommended way to avoid security breaches.

Secure the Backend
Majority of the mobile apps have a client-server mechanism. It is essential to have security measures in place to safeguard against malicious attacks at backend servers. Most of the developers assume that only the app that has been programmed to access APIs can access it. However, you should verify all your APIs in accordance with the mobile platform you aim to code for because API authentication and transport mechanisms can deviate from one platform to another.

Minimize Storage of Sensitive Data
To protect sensitive data from the users, developers prefer to store the data in the device local memory. However, it is best practice to avoid storing sensitive data as it might increase the security risk. If you have no other option other than storing the data, better use encrypted data containers or key chain.

At Zapio technology, we follow industry-standard mobile app development security best practices along with a demanding security testing strategy to ensure the reliability and integrity of our applications. We firmly believe that app development companies in Dubai are about innovation and creativity with safe user experience. Our extensive testing practice and Proficient mobile development specialists strive to provide you with the most secure and reliable mobile applications. For more information, drop an email at info@zapiotech.com or contact today on +971 52 708 1010.