Hackers are always on the prowl to get access to vital and personal information for vested interest. With the onset of mobile technology, the phishing activity has become rampant and new ways have been devised to attack and hack devices. It is because of this reason that companies have begun spending enormous sums of money, amenities, and time to protect their system but often fail miserably in doing so because the application layer of the system is rendered unguarded against these threats. Studies have shown that it’s the application layer that suffers most of the damage when a security breach takes place, thus, making it the most vulnerable and exposing it to risks and loss of private information.
Such a situation damages the reputation of the products and services, and of the company that provides them. To avoid such incidences, the developers should do away with the practice of developing security measures after the development of the app. Instead, the security features to protect the app from such phishing attacks must be developed when the app is being conceptualized and created. This reinforces the building blocks of app against hacks and makes them reliable.
With such critical security concerns, software industries have begun finding methods to shield the apps against the threats and a considerable progress has already been made. Let’s discuss a few things that can be done to enhance the security of an app while developing it.
1. Preliminary Analysis at Initial Stage
At the time of sketching a rough draft for the app, the development team and the security monitoring team should collectively note the initial level of potential threats which could pierce through the app. This activity must be exercised during the app development life cycle to comprehend:
2. Efficient Threat Modelling At Definition Phase
In this phase, the security reviewing team should work together with the development team to pinpoint the areas in the app where sensitive information is stored. This process also helps in plotting data flow. Once the pressure points are identified, the effort should then be towards obliterating or alleviating the threats that are posed towards the app. To achieve a protected and safe foundation for the app, the developers should perform threat modelling in the initial phases of app development.
3. Design Evaluation in the Design Phase
Application design scrutiny is one of the most vital steps of a mobile application development process. It helps in spotting and rectifying security flaws and risks in the initial stages of development. It should, however, be kept in mind that the review should be carried out by an outsider who doesn’t belong to the app development team. This procedure helps in identifying the most trivial of errors that could’ve skipped the eyes of the developers.
4. Inspect Code during The Development Phase
Scrutiny of codes is a crucial part of the app development process. Codes are divided into units and each unit should be thoroughly tested to avoid any loopholes, making the app vulnerable to threats. If in case, discrepancies are encountered, they should be tackled efficiently with extreme caution to avert security breaches.
5. Risk Analysis during Deployment Phase
A quality check for any product/service is necessary before it becomes available to the user. This scenario is no different. The app before going live should be thoroughly tested with certain defined parameters to reduce the risks to a great extent.
6. Attenuate Risk for App Development
After the identification of essentials required minimizing risks, it is important to rank, analyze and execute the essentials. For administering the aptest essential, an approach towards implementing the most inexpensive essential should be made. With this procedure followed, teams working on the issue can quickly identify the solution to the problem effectively.
7. Bench marking the App According To Accepted Industry Standards
To get your app a security certificate and for the company to attain a security scorecard, the app should be tested against industry standard benchmarks. Through this procedure, the developers can judge whether the app is successful against the industry standards or some changes are required to make the app foolproof. There are different industry standard benchmarks for different security criteria.
Making an app is easy. What’s difficult is to make it secure and foolproof against virus attacks, malware attacks, phishing attacks etc. so that the data of the user is safe and secure. A lot depends on the app, and as described earlier, the company’s reputation is at stake. This one feature, if implemented correctly in the initial stages can avoid many discrepancies and would also help in user retention.
This content was originally published here.