Nowadays, mobile app security is the need of the hour. With the ever-growing technologies and rapid deployment of software updates, it is imperative to put mobile app security on the top priority. According to the study, more than 10,573 malicious mobile applications were blocked and abandoned per day in the year 2018. Data breaches, phishing attacks, and malicious websites are impacting the industry of mobile app development and causing huge losses to businesses.
As the technology is growing, it is easier to identify and mitigate mobile app security risks, but it is also easy for hackers to crack security codes as major applications are still developed on insecure codes. Some hackers try to get access to crack the mobile app security to know the special features while others might do it to track backend services that have information about business data. To keep the data and system secured from such vulnerabilities, and network-level attacks, it is crucial to know the top mobile security threats.
What are the Top Threats to Mobile App Security and How to Identify and Mitigate Risks?
- Unsafe Storage of Sensitive Data:
There are many mobile applications available that lack secured storage of sensitive data of clients. For instance, mobile banking apps often store data locally. That means, your credit card numbers, passwords, PIN, login details, etc. might be stored somewhere in your mobile phone. Improper encryption makes the security concern worse as mobile apps do not encrypt all the data simultaneously, while the custom protocols for encryption are not considered safe.
How to Mitigate the Risk of Unsafe Storage of Sensitive Data?
It is recommended to do proper encryption practices for sensitive data using a strong encryption protocol. It would be a safe option to protect your sensitive local data as per the cybersecurity experts.
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Poor Mobile API Protection:
When it comes to mobile app development, it is important to deploy strong API protection. A mobile app API plays a major role to allow taking data from another application. Thus, the risks become high that your structured and stable information is compromised. Many developers often neglect the protection of mobile app APIs, this is where the hackers take advantage to run your application with an emulator and get access to the data.
How to Mitigate the Risk of Poor API Protection?
Malicious bots are the biggest risks that affect your mobile application. However, bots are not used for APIs, but if they are detected, it is time to take security measures. Developers and security experts can work on a bot protection solution that is customized for specific mobile apps.
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Sensitive Data Leakage:
Data leakage means the exposure of sensitive data in the vast digital world without any authentication. In many cases, the vulnerability of third-party access has caused data leakage. Sometimes such kind of data leakage may happen inadvertently. Firebase, which is the common data storage solution for Android applications, can be used by hackers to easily access databases and lead to leaking sensitive information when improperly configured.
How to Mitigate the Risk of Sensitive Data Leakage?
Preventing data caching is one of the easy ways to mitigate the risk of sensitive data leakage. You should not store your data in the cache as hackers may access that data to reach the user’s profile. Mobile app company can simply decide on not storing the sensitive data in the cache, while users also clean the cache manually to keep the app secure.
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Improper Logging and Monitoring:
Once your mobile app is live, logging and monitoring should be conducted regularly. Inadequate logging and monitoring can affect the response time and user experience. The information gaps won’t allow the users to stay protected against security threats.
How to Avoid Improper Logging and Monitoring?
The solution to avoid improper logging and monitoring is to create a system to help monitor the important variables of your application. It involves UI response time, login time, data consumption, battery consumption, crashes, failed login attempts, unusual activity, and other security threats.
Apart from this, insufficient transport layer protection, client-side injections, weak server-side controls, and poor source code security are also the major mobile app security threats that should be kept in mind while maintaining security testing for mobile applications.
Final Thought
Well, it is not possible to know about every mobile app security risk, but with the above-mentioned information, you can surely secure your mobile app against major security threats and data breaches.