Ensuring the security and compliance of your mobile application has never been as important as today. On the one hand, the advent of Industry 4.0 technologies like AI, Big Data, IoT, and many others has expedited application development dramatically. We have access to powerful mobile app development frameworks and tools that result in easier and faster mobile app development with quality.
On the other hand, with the same intensity, the threats have evolved. Perpetrators have not only grown more sophisticated with advanced methodologies but are also backed by hostile nation-states, knowing no restraint. On top of that, developing fool-proof app security is a myth. No matter how strong or advanced security measures you put in place, a breach is inevitable. However, all is not lost and there are ways to overcome this challenge. All you need to do is lay solid groundwork using the right security principles and best practices.
Such a well-founded app infrastructure is capable of surviving even the biggest attacks. So, even if it is not possible to have a 100% secure application, you can minimise the havoc hackers cause and protect your application. This discussion is all about awareness of these. We will start with the importance of Information security and compliance the governance aspect of it before moving on to the principles and best practices. So let’s start.
Reasons to Infuse Security in Your Mobile Application
Mobile application security is vital. There have been multiple instances of data theft and espionage in the past resulting from the use of vulnerable applications. That is why governments have come up with meticulous rules and regulations when it comes to mobile application security.
Further, ensuring robust security not only safeguards users privacy but also protects their financial and personal losses. However, it is much more important for you as a business. It also:
- protects your brand reputation,
- user trust, and
- secures day-to-day business operations.
In this section, we will discuss all these reasons why mobile app security is important.
Matter of National Security
While individual instances of mobile application cyber security solutions breaches are not direct national security threats, they might contribute to potential risks. There are three aspects of it
- First, mobile app security breaches can result in the unauthorised access or theft of sensitive data and information, having implications for national security.
- Similarly, in some cases, compromised mobile applications might be used to carry out surveillance or espionage. Vulnerable apps provide opportunities for perpetrators to gather intelligence on sensitive or confidential data.
- Moreover, given the increasing integration of mobile apps into critical infrastructure systems such as energy and transportation, vulnerable apps may act as a loophole, leading to security compromises that affect everyday life with indirect implications for national security.
That is why mobile applications are a prime target for cybercriminals. In just a single instance, they get access to vast and varied data sets that include data and information related to users, businesses and governments, allowing them to make a major impact with less effort.
Hence, you need a proactive rather than reactive approach to cyber security and compliance . Regularly update and secure your mobile applications; be aware of emerging technologies; talk to experts; or avail services like managed IT security services; the world is your oyster. Not doing so may also attract penalties and actions from government authorities, leading to the loss of your valuable business resources.
Protecting User Trust and Brand Reputation
When you place a robust security measure in place, it protects your user credentials, personal details, financial data and details, and other critical business information. Conversely, a security breach could lead to unauthorised access and potential misuse of this sensitive data, causing significant personal, professional and financial harm to both the users and the business.
Additionally, businesses will also face costs associated with handling the breach and improving security. However, the biggest setback comes in the form of lost user’s trust and damage to brand reputation. If your brand gains a bad reputation for not providing proper security for user data and information, you will lose customer trust.
This will shrink your customer base, thereby hampering the sustainability of your business and affecting your long-term growth and success.
Security of Your Hard-earned Intellectual Property
Mobile applications often contain proprietary code and intellectual property achieved after years of hard work. Unauthorised access to the application’s source code may lead to intellectual property theft, reverse engineering of your software product , and the creation of counterfeit or malicious versions of the app.
This will not only harm your business’s competitiveness but also the reputation of your brand through fake branding and other possible scams.
Avoiding Disruptions in Your Business Operation
Security vulnerabilities will also disrupt your business operations. You would need to mobilise and augment your existing resources to tackle the unwanted emergency.
This will effect your entire business infrastructure, leading to
- downtime,
- loss of revenue, and
- spoiling the user experience.
Additionally, for those who have not launched their application, not having the right security measures will leave you struggling to find application store to put your application in. Hence, for all the reasons mentioned above, it is critical to infuse your app with the most robust security measures. Now, this brings up the question of what are the aspects that you, as a business decision-maker, need to achieve all-round security.
Mobile Security Governance: Critical Aspects to Keep a tab
Given that mobile application security is linked to national security, governments around the world have legislated to ensure full protection for the nation as a whole.
This may cause confusion about which laws should be followed.
For example, in India, aspects of mobile application development such as data protection, cybercrime, etc. are regulated by the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; in Europe, it is GDPR and the EU cookie law.
But don’t worry; we have got you covered. Here are some fundamental aspects that your business’s mobile application development should incorporate for well-rounded security and to avoid legal consequences.
Data Privacy and Collection Requirements for Multi-level Security
As a constantly developing business, you might need user data and information to serve better. However, you need to be very cautious on this front. Data collection is a delicate process and a simple mismanagement may lead to data loss or diversion to unauthorised actors. Here are four steps to the same
- What you can do is start by implementing robust data protection policies and practices. You can get the help of an information security and compliance company to keep you informed and assist you with the execution part of this aspect.
- Second, you need to clearly communicate data collection purposes to users. They have the right to know why you need their personal data. As well, they have the right to reject your requests. Be open and flexible about it.
- Further, when the user is ready to share their information, you need to obtain their explicit consent that you will be collecting and processing their personal information. Likewise, inform them about the purpose of this exercise. They have every right to know it and this will only add to your brand’s trust.
- Lastly, you need to regularly audit and update your data privacy practices to comply with evolving regulations. Here, again, stay connected with the experts in the security and compliance space, like managed IT security services providers.
Data Security Requirements: Basics Matter
Further, there are some very fundamental yet highly effective security requirements that you, as a reputed brand, should include in your security plan. Moreover, you should also promote and market it to win users’ trust. Not to mention that the government too would be required to implement such measures, i.e.,
Data Encryption:
This practice converts readable data into unreadable code, known as ciphertext. This ensures that even if an unauthorised individual gains access to your data, they do not use it maliciously.
The government will also require you to employ encryption techniques to secure sensitive data collection, transfer and storage.
Access Controls and Authentication:
While access control measures define the rules as to who can access what within your system, authentication identifies entities seeking access. Combined, they are an important component of security as they ensure that only authorised individuals or systems have access to specific resources or information. Together, access control and authentication should form a crucial part of your security strategy to prevent and minimise the risk of security breaches.
Regular Security Audits:
Deploying the above security measures is not enough; you need to constantly up your game to stay ahead of the intruders. For this, you need to conduct regular security audits and carry out vulnerability assessments. This will keep you aware of their ongoing functioning, identify gaps to improve patchwork and make your security better than before.
Stay Aware and Updated:
You need to stay informed about the latest security standards and update systems accordingly. This will keep your security well up-to-date while helping you adhere to the latest governance guidelines.
E-commerce Business: More Activity Requires Higher Security
If you are an eCommerce business, you need to be extra cautious. Not only are there a lot of financial transactions going on every minute, but a lot of valuable customer data is being processed every second. Therefore, you need to secure online transactions with encryption (HTTPS), comply with Payment Card Industry Standards (PCI DSS), and clearly outline the terms of all relevant service policies. And as always, regularly update and patch your eCommerce platforms to address possible vulnerabilities.
Understand Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright For two-way Protection
This is an intricate one, as not only do you need to protect your intellectual property rights from infringements but you also need to respect the intellectual property rights of others. This will avoid issues like lawsuits, legal disputes, financial penalties, damaged reputations, and potential business disruptions.
Hence, to stay clear, you need to conduct thorough research and obtain licences for using third-party intellectual property. On the same lines, you need to educate your team about copyright laws and ask them to use original content or obtain proper permissions. Over and above that, you need to put content review processes in place to avoid unintentional plagiarism.
Ensure Transparent communication and adhere to Anti-Spam Laws
Your marketing will require regular communication with the user and communication is important to be secure. To avoid repercussions from different sections, such as the government, authorities, consumers, competitors and others, you should create a communication bridge. For this, there are opt-in mechanisms for communication. Create avenues wherein users themselves want to engage with you and make the first move by sharing their information. But here again, you need to communicate the purpose of communication and comply with anti-spam regulations such as CAN-SPAM.
Securing these aspects will keep you clear of unnecessary controversies and legal proceedings that will tarnish your brand and impact your success journey. Now, these are very broad security points that you need to work on in terms of app development as well as in business in general.
However, there are certain very specific principles in terms of application development that you need to follow during the design and development of your application. Let’s discuss those.
Powerful Principles of Mobile app development for Robust Security
There are seven highly important security principles for mobile applications, and your job is to ensure that they are followed during the development process.
Least Privilege Principle
The principle, in simple terms, asks you to follow a need-to-know rule for information sharing and a need-to-have rule for access provision. You need to ensure that the knowledge within your system is shared in a very restrained and controlled manner. No person should be given any extra access or information that they need to fulfil their responsibilities. Therefore, even if an attacker compromises an account, they will not be able to infiltrate deep into your system. Therefore, you will minimise the amount of information they can access and limit the damage they can inflict.
Separation of Duties Principle
This principle requires that no single role should be given too many responsibilities. More responsibility means more authority, and more authority means more access. In short, if a person or role is given too many responsibilities, this means they will have access to large part of your system. This will hamper business in multiple ways.
First, decision-making and the number of responsibilities are inversely related to each other. This means that such people are susceptible to making poor decisions, often marred by conflicts of interest.
Plus, any security breach to their account will lay bare a major part of your security system, as the infiltrator will be able to freely move and harm your application system.
Defence in Depth Principle
This principle requires multiple layers of security measures due to the underlying fact that any security system is going to fail, as we also discussed above.
Therefore, instead of relying on a single line of defence, this principle demands that you employ a combination of security controls active at different layers. So that if one layer is breached, there are additional layers put in place to prevent attacks. This strategy provides a robust and comprehensive defence against various forms of threat.
Hence, for the security of your software ecosystem, you might need to install firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and antivirus software to ensure the safety of your application ecosystem.
Another layer of security comes at the physical level, such as employee training on security best practices and the implementation of physical security. If an attacker bypasses one layer, the other layer will still be there to thwart the attack. Here, availing of infrastructure management services will come handy.
Failing Securely Principle
This is quite a progressive security principle in mobile development. It accepts the fact that security measures are bound to fail. However, it says that you need to fail on your own terms.
Hence, it requires you to set up systems that will tell you when your designated security fails and when a system or application encounters an error or failure, it does so in a way that minimises the potential for security risks.
For example, if a user enters incorrect login credentials in your mobile app, instead of providing detailed error messages as to which part of the credentials, such as username or password, is incorrect, the app should display a generic message such as “Invalid username or password.”
This prevents attackers from gaining intelligence of any sort to carry out unauthorised access.
Open Design Principle and Avoiding Security by Obscurity Principle
Both of these principles are related.
On the one hand, this principle of open design asks you to design your security from the perspective that the attackers are aware of your design. It asks you to develop an open design that is in the public domain and believes in the fact that the simpler it is, the more difficult it is to circumvent.
This will help you design more meticulous and robust security that stays steps ahead of the attackers. On the other hand, the obscurity principle asks you to create a security system that does not rely on keeping its inner workings secret or hiding details as a primary means to safeguard your system. Instead, it says that your security measures should be robust even when details are known to potential attackers.
Minimising Attack Surface Area Principle
This principle asks you to reduce the chances of attachment by minimising the number of entry points. This is what it means by reducing the attack surface area. This way, there are fewer avenues for attackers to target, resulting in a securer system.
For example, you can consider closing unnecessary network ports and removing unnecessary features from your mobile application. Each open port or service represents a potential entry point for attackers. Minimise these to reduce the overall risk .These are some of the most effective security principles of mobile application development that you need to follow during the design and development phases for maximum security.
Also Read : Mobile App Development Guide
Conclusion
We know that knowledge is power, but we should also be aware that knowledge is protection and in this blog we tried to share the same. We saw why mobile security is significant in multiple aspects. Not only are they important for users and businesses, but they are also important from the perspective of national security. We also discussed why it is important to ensure mobile app development security and what security aspects you need to work on to avoid repercussions of any form. Lastly, we also discussed the basic security principles of mobile app development that you should be aware of so that you can ensure the security of your application right from day one.
