How Companies can Secure Mobile Apps from Hackers

The proliferation of hacking targeting mobile apps is pervasive and continues to grow putting business owners and employees on the front lines to secure their apps from hackers. Whilst most of the hack attacks primarily targeted Android devices, vulnerabilities have been discovered in iOS making it clear that no system is completely immune.

Hackers look for security loop holes in the operating system and inside mobile apps to exploit business mobile devices that are used by employees. Apps and systems that have not been updated to the latest version and security patches that weren’t applied are easy targets. In a growing number of security incidents, users can unwittingly give hackers access to their device simply by opening a bogus email and clicking on a link or watching a video without realising that it could compromise their device. Just recently hackers used a video that secretly installed malware on the user’s mobile device unbeknownst to them.

Ensure that your code is secure. The first defence is hiring mobile app developers who have experience in developing secure custom mobile apps. This entails building a highly secure application from the design, through coding and documentation of the app. In many cases, hackers will download mobile apps to conduct reverse engineering and look for vulnerabilities they can exploit.

Ensure that your device is secure. The security of an app depends on the security of the device in which it’s installed. The security of the underlying devices should be checked regularly for viruses, malware and spyware. There are several security apps on the market that can help protect Android and iOS devices from these types of threats. Any device that has been jailbroken should be restricted from accessing business data to help keep rogue applications at bay.

Is your mobile data secured? The latest iOS and Android operating systems make it easy to wipe data from a mobile device if it is lost or stolen. The data can even be erased remotely. Also, both Android 4.4+ and iOS 6+ have on-board data encryption as a standard feature that can be turned on to protect the user and company data, including emails from prying eyes.

Moreover, you should consider controlling the execution of high risk mobile transactions that could put you and your device at risk for fraud. The adoption of risk-averse mobile payment and credit card processing offer some level of restriction to client-side functionality that are based on user locations, network security and the security of the device, among others, to protect the integrity of personal and financial data that may be stored on the mobile device.

photo credit: Kārlis Dambrāns via photopin (license)