The use of mobile applications and mobile technologies has increased enormously in recent years. Now it has become a very crucial part of everyone’s lifestyle and people are accessing it to make their task easier and many other significant features. More versatility means more severe security risks. Due to the emergence of these mobile applications rapidly at every level, they are easily prone to various malicious hackers and cyber-attacks. So, it is becoming a very necessary step to secure mobile applications.
Common Application Security Risks
Mobile applications are rapidly updating with new software and systems, to increase the efficiency of their usage. They are also introducing the various mobile risks and threats. At an organization level employees and users are intended to adopt mobile application features and services for various tasks such as connecting to system servers and networks. Hackers can easily penetrate the network connectivity and can inject malicious code into your mobile application to attempt cyberattacks.
The most harmful and frequently happening mobile application risks include insecure storage of data, unsecured data in the database, weak authentication, unsecured communication, and network security problems, hardcoded credentials & API keys in source code, etc. By the term unsecured communication, it means to state that mobile applications have various tasks of sending or receiving data on many servers if the data is transferred without having proper encryption anyone can access it unauthentically which results in compromising of sensitive data.
According to OWASP, an insecure or weak authentication is a very damaging mobile application vulnerability. Not having systematic authentication can lead to anyone accessing confidential data. The organization should always keep in mind the code quality and remove all the security bugs from the application because hackers try to inject malicious code into the application and steal user information.
Another technique cyber attackers often try is reverse engineering the application to steal sensitive information like hardcoded credentials or API Keys. Hackers sometimes also try to change the code to redesign or modify the entire app by decompiling them & adding malicious codes and functions to it & then recompiling it to exploit the features of the application in their ways.
How you can secure mobile applications?
We can see the exponential increase in mobile application vulnerabilities, because of their booming IT services. Many enterprises rely on these mobile applications for sharing a lot of sensitive and confidential information. Securing the mobile applications and their communication from all these malicious hackers and threats should be an important concern not only for normal users but also for every company.
There are numerous ways by which you can maintain security in your mobile applications and protect them from hackers:
- Encryption is the key, you should always encrypt the local data of your mobile application, in order to prevent hackers or malicious applications from accessing the data.
- Mobile application servers and systems should always have a systematic two-factor or multi-factor authentication to avoid unwanted accessing of crucial data externally or internally.
- Always use secure channels for communication between your application and servers to prevent hackers from snooping the data.
- Backend servers should always be safeguarded against malicious attacks and avoid using outdated services.
- Regular scanning should be done into mobile application systems, backend servers, to find out vulnerabilities in the security system to avoid future threats and risks.
- Performs mobile application penetration testing by cybersecurity professionals on a regular basis.
Tridentsec Mobile Penetration Testing Methodology
Tridentsec has adopted the best industry standards for testing – like OWASP & also techniques and methodologies we have developed based on our own experiences.
Our penetration testing experts have manual and automated penetration testing procedures to discover the vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations in your Android or iOS applications.
Our cybersecurity experts aim to protect your organization from data breaches and malicious hackers. Tridentsec security experts are specialized in both authenticated and unauthenticated penetration testing, and communication testing between your mobile application and servers.
We conduct various assessments which can analyze the problems and find out loopholes in security infrastructure & source code by reverse engineering the application & find out any hardcoded sensitive information like credentials or API keys.
After all assessments are done, we will provide you an evaluated report including vulnerabilities, potential risks & security misconfiguration, and effective remediation while assuring to secure the application and preventing any future threats to occur.
Conclusion
Mobile applications are somehow different, they have a great impact on our lifestyle by concluding a lot to make any work more agile and efficient. You have to maintain security in your mobile application system to avoid malicious activities & data breaches.
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