A Guide to Mobile Application Security

Mobile apps have become indispensable to almost every major industry, from financial services and healthcare to retail and entertainment. The average person uses 34 mobile apps per month, with in-app purchases totaling more than $167 billion last year.

Since mobile apps operate in environments that organizations don't control, traditional network defenses can't fully secure mobile apps against threat actors.

These malicious actors have employed a myriad of techniques to attack mobile apps including: phishing, malware, exploit kits, tampered/cloned apps, automated bots, and compromised development tools.

However, mobile app security is often neglected by developers due to various factors including increased time-to-market pressure and focus on user experience and app performance leaving apps vulnerable to attacks.

Security needs to happen at the speed of development, without impacting performance or user experience.

Understanding where your code has vulnerabilities and hard-coded secrets is the first step towards securing your mobile application. Using an automated mobile application security testing (MAST) tool integrates this process directly into development workflows. Continuous testing allows vulnerabilities to be protected during development, instead of waiting until right before the app is released.

Once vulnerabilities have been found, the next step is to protect them so they aren't exploited by attackers. Mobile app protection starts with code hardening, including obfuscation and encryption, to block static analysis of your app. To protect against dynamic attacks, runtime application self-protection checks are built into your app's code. RASP checks monitor behavior at runtime, blocking common tampering attacks like function hooks and dynamic instrumentation. A compiler-based approach to mobile app security weaves these protections throughout the compiled application code, deeply embedding protections across the app instead of as single, isolated layers.

Once your app is released, it lives in an environment you don't control. With real-time threat monitoring, you get a view into tampering and repackaging attempts, fraud attacks, and how you can separate attackers from legitimate users.

Many mobile apps are reliant on APIs to connect to backend systems and perform critical functions. But bad actors look to exploit APIs to gain access to your systems. App attestation is an essential runtime protection for mobile apps, verifying that every API call to the backend system is coming from an authentic, unmodified version of your app.

Mobile application security that covers the entire SDLC is a must in today's threat landscape.

Download the report to get the full guide on how you can secure your mobile app with Guardsquare. https://hubs.ly/Q04vqNKG0