It's safe to say that every consumer and employee uses and relies on mobile applications for both work and play every day, generating billions of dollars in the global mobile economy. Employees use mobile apps to store and access corporate and customer data that must be protected.
Consumers use mobile applications to shop, manage their bank accounts, travel, eat, get healthcare and much more, and therefore expect privacy and protection of personal data. Therefore, to protect all users by preventing intrusions into mobile applications, organizations need to consider a minimum set of requirements to be able to guarantee the basics of cybersecurity and prevent intrusions into their mobile applications.
The latest edition of IBM's 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report reveals an average cost of USD 4,45 million per breach, marking a 15% increase in data breach costs in just three years. Additionally, Appdome's 2023 Global Consumer Expectations on Mobile App Security report indicates that 41,8% of consumers say they, a friend or family member have been the victim of a cyberattack on a mobile app.
Appdome, the one-stop shop for mobile app defense, says mobile app security should be a priority for every business. Below are four requirements that can guarantee greater protection against the compromise of mobile applications and guarantee the basics in relation to cybersecurity.
- Ensure operating system integrity
Mobile application security starts with ensuring the security of the environment in which the application operates. An integrity breach in the mobile operating system, such as Jailbreak (iOS) or Root (Android), makes the mobile device's operating environment insecure. Jailbreaking is the process of removing software restrictions imposed by Apple on iOS devices, allowing the installation of unauthorized applications. Root is the equivalent practice on Android devices, it grants the privileged access to modify the operating system.
- Encrypt known stores of user data
Most mobile apps generate or store various types of data essential to their functioning, including API keys, user credentials, transactions, event histories, and more.
Experts clarify that to protect against data and credential theft, organizations and mobile developers must enhance their applications with strong data encryption of any information stored on the device, used in memory or transmitted over the network.
- Mobile bot detection and prevention
Detecting the presence and preventing the interaction of malicious bots with the application or infrastructure serves as a highly effective preventative measure. If they manage to infiltrate active applications, they can launch attacks on an organization's web servers, with the aim of disrupting the network, stealing confidential information or launching large-scale fraudulent attacks.
Organizations are already protecting mobile apps against bots with solution integrations like Appdome's MOBILEBot Defense. The extension allows full portability between different Web Application Firewalls (WAF).
4. Secure the application codebase
Another common attack vector that hackers exploit involves breaking into the mobile app and changing it by reverse engineering the app to learn how it is coded. Hackers employ this technique to create malicious versions of the application, Trojan horses, or simply steal intellectual property (IP).
“It is critical that protections operate independently and across the entire mobile application to avoid any single point of failure in your security posture. It is also important to employ unique methods to secure different parts of the mobile application. This approach not only increases security, but also mitigates the risk of cascading or domino failures,” emphasizes Chris Roeckl, Chief Product Officer at Appdome.
