The Must-know Mobile Security Questions

Posted on the 04 January 2017 by Techsemo
Security plays the major role in every innovation. Many new projects and innovations failed to meet the customer’s satisfaction because of the security issues. It is the duty of every developer, to develop bug-free software and take care of the security issues. A survey says that 41% of the products can’t meet the customer satisfaction, because, they found bugs in it.
The mobile devices are rapidly growing day-by-day. Using mobile phones has become the daily habits of many. Maintaining security is highly important in this scenario.
The security questions, which must be answered for sure, are as follows.
1. How the safety of the app is known?
An app can’t be judged by its look. Kaspersky, the well-known app for its security has some of the serious security issues. How to know, whether the app is safe to download? This is the question that runs in the minds of most of the people. People use Google to find out the tips for the trustworthy sites; sometimes, they may not find the expected answer. Here are some of the tips to find out the safe apps.
  • Friendly app stores
Mac users use the App Store; Android users use Google Play Store. These App stores offer the guidelines about what can be developed on the app and what can’t be developed. The difference in the review process can conclude, whether the app is safe or not. Usually, most of the apps in the App Store will be safe. It is difficult for the developers to make the unsafe apps in the App store. The reason is not because of the guidelines, it is because of the cost. The company has to pay $99 per annum and they have to give 30% of the app’s profit.
  • Do research on new apps
New apps should be carefully selected. It is not about learning code, opening packages and not to see how they actually work. But, users must try to know the basic information about the new apps. People try to get a good idea about everything that an app does.
People should do some deductive work on the creators and reviews regarding their previous work and about their status in the tech community.
2. What is the difference between the software risk on the mobile devices and the enterprise software?
The mobile software operates on the device outside the work environment. If the devices are jailbroken, then the source codes will be reverse engineered. The user will get an indication if someone is making a mess with their mobile. Attack prevention and detection should be based on how well mobile devices interacts with the internal servers.
3. How do the mobile apps collaborate with the internal servers?
Media mainly focus on the mobile security as the primary factor. At present, when the mobile devices interact with the externally facing servers, there is a high possibility of risks to occur. An organization should concentrate on its threat modeling and testing.
4. What are the ways the developer can be attacked?
Before building the app, the developer must ask himself, what things he will steal from the new app if he is the hacker. At such situation, they will not think of any single area or point of attack. By doing so, the developer will have list of items that they should concentrate to eliminate the security issues
5. What is the apt way to avoid an attack on a mobile app?
The common misunderstanding about the mobile security is that people implement a single solution for it and believing that it can be protected from most of the security issues. This expectation can lead to a trouble. A mobile will have multiple features; each feature has the possibility of attack. So all together, a mobile device will have many possibilities of attacks. With proper and clear research, the developers can prepare different types of attacks and find solutions for them accordingly. They must be prepared for any kind of attacks with a measure to provide security coverage.
6. How to educate the users?
When it comes to the matter of security, developers must educate their users regarding the security threats and create awareness among them. Not all the users are the have the technical background, the information must every user and they must know something regarding the security and the how they enter the software. All the users must know some basics regarding security issues. Users must be educated about the primary principles of the safety and security so that they can prevent the business from the bigger loss.

7. Is data encrypted?

The built-in mobile operating System security is reliable on the devices, which are non-jailbroken and non-rooted. These devices have set a passcode for themselves. To mention the point in a clear view, they should not be trusted.
The libraries such as common crypto and javax.crypto should be used to encrypt the sensitive data by themselves. The encryption should include the personally identified information, passwords, tokens, cookies, protected health information, log files and much more.
All these things don’t apply to the data written within the file system. For the effective encryption, it has to be pervasive.
8. Will the app use HTTPS encryption for enforcing it?
Transferring to the HTTPS is the best choice, but, it should not stop with that. Apps should always have the SSL certificate. Above all, it should build trust; for which, the apps should be pinned with the SSL certificate or they should use the two-way SSL authentication.
The responsibility of the back-end developers is to make sure that the server supports powerful protocols and ciphers; so that, it will not support the less secure ones.
9. Is the internet connection always safe?
The answer will be no. the cellular carriers of the 3G or 4G networks should be a secure one. The Wi-Fi hotspots may create a problem. The virus in the Wi-Fi will affect the entire devices, which have that Wi-Fi connection. Wi-Fi network can seize all the data, which the person has, sent out of the air.
The FDIC has founded some cases, where cyberpunks have swiped some bank login information from the Wi-Fi users.
For this issue, not even the mobile security apps can be protected against that.
10. Whether the password lock is necessary on the phone?
Yes. A Password is necessary to unlock the phone. It protects the phones from the case of theft. It can be hacked off, but still, it remains as a security gate.
11. Read the app’s privacy policy
How the data is used is something tricky. The data is recorded for everything; it starts from, how much coffee the user drinks to the dance moves the person use. The data is being collected every time the user downloads the app. This data includes email address, social media login info, contacts and the time of the day the person uses the app.
Most of the companies will not get the specific data about the user. But they can use the data in the number of ways. The user must know about, what information the app is tracking and for what purpose the company uses your data.
The security has to be considered as the main aspect because the failure of many projects is due to security issues. Both the users and the companies have to take care of their security in all their technical aspects.
Author Bio: Smith Felix is a senior copywriter in Dectar, a best PHP script developer in India which provides mobile app services for the past 3 years. He is also an expert in digital marketing and web development who writes articles on the latest topics covering valuable information on cloning scripts.