If you are one of the growing numbers of companies using Big Data, this post will explain the benefits and challenges of migrating to the public cloud and why it could be the ideal environment for your operations.
Cloud-based Big Data on the rise
According to a recent survey by Oracle, 80% of companies are planning to migrate their Big Data and analytics operations to the cloud. One of the main factors behind this was the success that these companies have had when dipping their toe into Big Data analytics. Another survey of US companies discovered that over 90% of enterprises had carried out a big data initiative last year and that in 80% of cases, those projects had highly beneficial outcomes.
Most initial trials with Big Data are carried out in-house. However, many of those who find it successful want to expand their Big Data operations and see the cloud as a better solution. The reason for this is that the IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions offered by cloud vendors are much more cost effective than developing in-house capacity.
One of the issues with in-house, Big Data analyses is that it frequently involves the use of Hadoop. Whilst Apache’s open-source software framework has revolutionized storage and Big Data processing, in-house teams find it very challenging to use. As a result, many businesses are turning to cloud vendors who can provide Hadoop expertise as well as other data processing options.
The benefits of moving to the public cloud
One of the main reasons for migrating is that public cloud Big Data services provide clients with essential benefits. These include on-demand pricing, access to data stored anywhere, increased flexibility and agility, rapid provisioning and better management.
On top of this, the unparalleled scalability of the public cloud means it is ideal for handling Big Data workloads. Businesses can instantly have all the storage and computing resources they need and only pay for what they use. Public cloud can also provide increased security that creates a better environment for compliance.
Software as a service (SaaS) has also made public cloud Big Data migration more appealing. By the end of 2017, almost 80% of enterprises had adopted SaaS, a rise of 17% from 2016, and over half of these use multiple data sources. As the bulk of their data is stored in the cloud, it makes good business sense to analyse it there rather than go through the process of moving back to an in-house data centre.
The other benefit of the public cloud is the decreasing cost of data storage. While many companies might currently think the cost of storing Big Data over a long period is expensive compared to in-house storage, developments in technology are already bringing down the costs and this will continue to happen in the future. At the same time, you will see vast improvements in the public cloud’s ability to process that data in greater volumes and at faster speeds.
Finally, the cloud enables companies to leverage other innovative technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and serverless analytics. The pace of developments these bring means that those companies who are late adopters of using Big Data in the public cloud find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. By the time they migrate, their competitors are already eating into their market.
The challenge of moving Big Data to the public cloud
Migrating huge quantities of data to the public cloud do raise a few obstacles. Integration is one such challenge. A number of enterprises find it difficult to integrate data when it is spread across a range of different sources and others have found it challenging to integrate cloud data with that stored in-house.
Workplace attitudes also pose a barrier to migration. In a recent survey, over half of respondents claimed that internal reluctance, incoherent IT strategies and other organizational problems created significant issues in their plans to move Big Data initiatives to the public cloud.
There are technical issues to overcome too. Particularly data management, security and the above-mentioned integration.
Planning your migration
Before starting your migration, it is important to plan ahead. If you intend to fully move Big Data analyses to the public cloud, the first thing to do is to cease investment in in-house capabilities and focus on developing a strategic plan for your migration, beginning with the projects that are most critical to your business development.
Moving to the cloud also offers scope for you to move forward and improve what you already have. For this reason, don’t plan to make your cloud infrastructure a direct replica of what you have in-house. It is the ideal opportunity to create for the future and build something from the ground up that will provide even more benefits than you currently have. Migration is the chance to redesign your solutions so they can benefit from all the things the cloud has to offer: automation, AI, machine learning, etc.
Finally, you need to decide on the type of public cloud service that best fits your current and future needs. Businesses have a range of choices when it comes to cloud-based Big Data services, these include software as a service (SaaS) infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS); you can even get machine learning as a service (MLaaS). Which level of service you decide to opt for will depend on a range of factors, such as your existing infrastructure, compliance requirements, Big Data software and in-house expertise.
Conclusion
Migrating Big Data analytics to the public cloud offers businesses a raft of benefits: cost savings, scalability, agility, increased processing capabilities, better access to data, improved security and access to technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Whilst moving does have obstacles that need to be overcome, the advantages of being able to analyze Big Data gives companies a competitive edge right from the outset.
Data loss can be devastating for a business, affecting operations, damaging reputations and leading to significant fines. For this reason, it is absolutely critical that those with hybrid cloud systems fully understand how to keep their data safe. In this post, we‘ll explain how this can be done.
Physical security
One key area of data protection is physical security; making sure data is not lost through power failure, natural disasters, accidents, loss or theft. To do this, datacentres are often located away from other buildings to reduce the risk of fire spreading and have more than one backup power supply available. They also have backup communications systems and secure physical security such as human patrols, access control, secure fencing and CCTV. The location of all devices is also monitored, as is logical access. The scale of this physical security is far more robust than most businesses can afford in protecting a much smaller datacentre on their own premises.
In the event that the datacentre itself is compromised, perhaps due to a natural disaster like a flood or earthquake, cloud providers remotely store backup copies of data at other datacentres and have enough inbuilt redundancy to continue service so that the data remains available.
Device failure, human error and corruption
Three common causes of data loss are device failure, human error and corruption from malware. One of the advantages of using hybrid-cloud is that data is dispersed across multiple machines managed by the cloud provider. If a failed drive occurs, the end user won’t even notice, a backup can be initiated immediately to maintain data availability. At the same time, for improved protection, it is possible to configure storage so that data cannot be erased, ensuring that saved files are always available for recovery.
Disaster recovery
Having a disaster recovery strategy is essential for any business, ensuring that in the event of a disaster, it can be back online as soon as possible. Today, many businesses use two separate storage systems to put this into place, one for primary storage and another for backup and recovery. For those using a hybrid cloud model, there is no need to do this as the same cloud storage can be used for both primary storage and for disaster recovery backup.
An additional advantage is that the storage architecture used in the hybrid cloud puts data into a single store, preventing multiple copies of files being stored on separate file servers. This cuts storage costs and eradicates the problems of having different versions of the same file being stored in different places. A hybrid cloud storage service is not only able to support file-level restore, it can also, when used with versioning, enable users to access earlier file versions if they are needed.
Security from data breach
Data breach is a significant issue for businesses and, with the advent of GDPR, could result in enormous fines. Key areas of weakness are phishing attacks and social engineering, especially where staff have saved restricted data to their personal cloud storage accounts such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive.
There a number of problems caused when staff use their personal accounts to save company data. Firstly, these personal accounts rarely offer the encryption needed to keep data secure and secondly, the company has no knowledge of what data has been shared or who with. Thirdly, the saving of data in this manner can be a violation of regulatory compliance.
While rarely malicious, these human errors are a serious threat to data security. However, by using a hybrid cloud architecture the threat can be minimised. Cloud services can provide at-rest and in transit encryption while employing ID and device management technology to limit how files can be shared and to prevent employees saving data to personal accounts. If a data breach does occur, accurate logging ensures that it will be easier to trace the source and speed up recovery.
Ongoing security
As new threats appear all the time, there is never a point at which your data is fully secure; you should always remain vigilant. To do this, regularly check that your platform has all the security features it needs and that it remains compliant with changes in regulations. You should also ensure that your cloud service provider does the same.
Conclusion
Hybrid cloud offers one of the most secure solutions for businesses, providing physical security and an end to end architecture that protects data at rest and as it moves between locations. Importantly, it does this in a more affordable way than can be achieved in an on-site datacentre. Public cloud providers, for example, can use big data and AI to monitor cloud systems for threats and vulnerabilities on a scale that would be too costly for most businesses to do on-site.
We use passwords everywhere. We need them to log in to our websites, apps, online accounts and even the devices we access them on. Unfortunately, cybercriminals have discovered increasingly clever ways to find out what they are. To keep you up to date with their growing sophistication and to put you in a better position to defend your business and private accounts, here are seven of the most common ways hackers can crack your passwords.
1. Phishing attacks
Phishing attacks are the most common way that a hacker will attempt to get access to your passwords. They involve sending some form of electronic communication, typically email but also SMS or other forms of message, that contains a malicious link. Clicking on the link will result in malware being downloaded onto your device which will silently collect your usernames and passwords and send them to the hacker.
2. Social engineering attacks
Social engineering attacks are a specialised form of phishing that has been used heavily in recent years, particularly against businesses and their customers. The attack begins with the arrival of a seemingly legitimate email from a reputable company informing you that there’s an action you need to take. A link will be provided for you to carry out that action and when you click on it, you’ll be taken to a website and asked to sign in.
The website you are sent to is a scam site, often a clone of the genuine site with a URL that is not too dissimilar to the original. When you log in, that scam site records your username and password for the hacker’s use.
Another version of social engineering involves sending employees legitimate-looking emails that pretend to be from the company they work for. They often appear to come from people they know and trust within the organisation. These too will ask for an action to be carried out (e.g. your password is about to expire, please click here to update) and, once again, logging in will result in the login credentials being stolen.
3. Spidering
Spidering is a form of investigative hacking in which cybercriminals seek to build relationships with their victims as a way to steal passwords. In a way, it takes phishing and social engineering to a new level but the depth to which it goes to often provides better results. Hackers will often pretend to be potential clients or contractors and will ask for information about a company in the hope of gaining insights into its systems and networks. Any information it receives will then be analysed to help it find vulnerabilities to attack.
4. Password stealing malware
Our day to day use of the internet makes it possible that we can unwittingly click on malicious links or visit compromised websites. If you do, there’s the potential for malware to be downloaded to your device – especially if you do not have antivirus protection. There are specific types of malware which are designed to steal passwords, usernames and other personal information. The most common are keyloggers and screen scrapers, which record the keys you press on your keyboard or take screenshots of your activity.
5. Brute force attacks
A brute force attack is when a hacker will make multiple attempts to try and guess your password. This may look like an impossible feat, but it isn’t. Cybercriminals can cheaply purchase databases containing billions of stolen usernames and passwords from the dark web. These are then fed into password cracking tools that make use of AI and machine learning so that the guesses made, rather than being random, are algorithmically generated. The speed at which these tools make login attempts means that a password can often be cracked within minutes.
6. Rainbow table attacks
Systems generally encrypt stored passwords which means it’s impossible to discover them without having the right encryption key. Sophisticated hackers keep directories of stolen passwords and their associated encryption keys, helping them cut the time needed to break in. A rainbow table attack, meanwhile, uses an encryption algorithm to generate a list of every potential plain text password. These are then compared to the encrypted passwords on an organisations system to speed up the discovery of the right version.
The enormous number of possible passwords in a rainbow table means they can be terabytes in size. As a result, cybercriminals are making increased use of the cloud to help them process the data during an attack.
7. Network analysing tools
Network analysis tools enable cybercriminals to intercept data sent over a network and steal any unencrypted passwords they contain. To carry out an attack, hackers need physical access to the network or the use of malware.
SSL and other forms of encryption are the best defence against this type of hacking, together with VPNs. Companies can use network analysis tools themselves to discover if they have plain text passwords unwittingly being transmitted.
Conclusion
The growing number of sophisticated ways hackers can find passwords means organisations have to continually find better ways to protect themselves. Today, there are numerous defences you can use: encryption, SSL, email signing certificates, firewalls, antivirus, intrusion protection, email filters, logical access control, multi-factor authentication and biometric authentication, for example. Additionally, the training of staff and the implementation of rigorous security policies and procedures can also help.
Carrying an industry record of developing 100% hack proof applications come with a responsibility and a baseline guarantee that none of the digital solutions developed under our name would face security breach. As a way to achieve that, Anteelo’s Quality Assurance team are familiar with all the possible security risks which an app can face. Knowing the risks makes it easy to ignore pitfalls and write secure apps. Helping us be on top of the game when it comes to assuring security is having complete knowledge of OWASP secure coding practices (Open Web Application Security Project). It is an online community of security specialists who have developed free documentation, learning materials, and tools for building secure mobile and web applications.
Along with other things, they have also compiled a list of OWASP Mobile Top 10 security threats in mobile applications.
While the OWASP security practices document is fairly clear, it can sometimes be difficult for businesses to connect it from real-world cases.
In this article, we will give you a basic overview of Top 10 mobile security risks and give examples of the real world disclosed vulnerabilities for each of them. It will give you an insight into what we prepare for at Anteelo when we work on your application.
Before looking into the risks, let us look into statistics.
NowSecure looked into the apps on Google Play store and App store identified that over 85% of apps violate one of the risks.
Of these applications, 50% have had insecure data storage and somewhere the same number of apps were working with insecure communication risk. Here’s a graph showcasing the percentage of occurence of the OWASP Mobile Top 10 risks
List of 10 Most Common Threats to Mobile Applications and the Best Practices to Avoid Them
M1: Improper Platform Usage
The category of OWASP security testing consists of the misuse of a device functionality or the instance of failure when using platform’s security controls. It can include platform permissions, Android intents, misuse of the TouchID, Keychain, etc.
Real-World Case:
Three iOS apps: “Fitness Balance app”, “Heart Rate Monitor”, and “Calories Tracker app” came into light for bypassing Apple’s Touch ID. They were asking users to use their fingerprint to get fitness information, while they were using it to charge money from the App Store.
Best Practice to Avoid:
The developer must not allow Keychain encryptions through server route and keep the keys in one device only, so that it’s impossible to get exploited on other servers or devices.
The developer must secure the app through Keychain to store the app’s secret that has a dedicated access control list.
The developer must take permission to limit which apps are allowed to communicate with their application.
The developer must control the first of OWASP Mobile Top 10 list by defining the explicit intents and thus blocking all other components to access information present in the intent.
M2: Insecure Data Storage
OWASP consider it a threat when someone gets access to a lost/stolen mobile device or when malware or another repackaged app starts acting on the adversary’s behalf and executes action on mobile device.
An insecure data storage vulnerability usually lead to these risks:
Fraud
Identity Theft
Material Loss.
Reputation Damage
External Policy Violation (PCI)
Real-World Case:
Dating apps like Tinder, OKCupid, and Bumble have time and again been scrutinized for their insecure data storage practices. The security lapses present on these apps vary according to feasibility and severity and feasibility, can expose users’ name, login details, message history, and even location, in addition to other personal account activity.
Best Practices to Avoid:
For iOS, OWASP security practices recommends using purposely made vulnerable apps like iGoat to threat model their development framework and apps. This will help the ios app developers understand how APIs deal with the app processes and information assets.
The Android app developers can use the Android Debug Bridge shell for checking the file permissions of targeted app and DBMS to check database encryption. They should also use Memory Analysis Tool and Android Device Monitor to ensure device memory doesn’t have unintended data.
M3: Insecure Communication
When devising a mobile app, data is exchanged in client-server model. So, when the data is transmitted, it should first traverse the device’s carrier network and the internet. The threat agents could exploit vulnerabilities and intercept sensitive data while traveling across wire. Here are the different threat agents who exist:
Adversary who shares your local network – a compromised Wi-Fi
Network or Carrier devices – cell towers, proxy, routers, etc.
Malware on the mobile device.
The interception of sensitive data via communication channel would end up in a privacy violation, which can lead to:
Identity theft
Fraud
Reputational Damage.
Real-World Case:
Rapid7 security company disclosed several vulnerabilities attached with kids’ smartwatches. Those watches were marketed as ones used by parents for tracking their children and sending them messages or making calls on their smartwatch.
The watches were supposed to be contacted by approved contact numbers through the mode of a whitelist, but the company found that the filters were not even working. The watches even accepted configuration commands via text messages. It meant that a hacker could change the watch settings and put children at risk.
“You can identify where the phone or the child is, you can gain access to audio, or make phone calls to children,” said Deral Heiland, the IoT research lead at Rapid7.
Best Practices to Avoid:
Developers should not only look for leakages over traffic communicated between app and server but also device that holds the app and other device or local network.
Applying TLS/SSL for transporting channels is also one of the mobile app security best practices to consider when it comes to transmitting sensitive information and other sensitive data.
Use certificates given by trusted SSL chain verifications.
Do not send sensitive data over alternate channels like MMS, SMS, or push notifications.
Apply separate encryption layer to sensitive data before giving to the SSL channel.
M4: Insecure Authentication
The threat agents who exploit authentication vulnerabilities do so via automated attacks which makes use of custom-built or available tools.
The business impact of M4 can be:
Information Theft
Reputational Damage
Unauthorized Access to Data.
Real-World Case:
In 2019, a US bank was hacked by a cyber attacker who took advantage of the bank’s website flaw and circumvented the two-factor authentication that was implemented for protecting accounts.
The attacker logged into the system through stolen victim credentials and upon reaching the page where PIN or security answer had to be entered, the attacker used a manipulated string in the Web URL, which had set the computer as a recognized one. This enabled him to cross the stage and initiate the wire transfers.
Best Practices to Avoid:
The app security team must study the app authentication and test it through binary attacks in offline mode for determining if it can be exploited.
The OWASP web application testing security protocols must match those of mobile apps.
Use online authentication methods as much as possible, just like that in case of web browser.
Do not enable app data loading until the server has authenticated the user sessions.
The places where local data us eventual, ensure that it is encrypted through encrypted key derived from users login credentials.
The persistent authentication request must also be stored on the server.
The security team should be careful with device-centric authorization tokens in the app, since if the device gets stolen, the app can get vulnerable.
Since the unauthorized physical access of devices is common, the security team must enforce regular user credential authentication from server end.
M5: Insufficient Cryptography Risks
The threat agents in this case are the ones who have the physical access of data which was encrypted wrongly. Or where a malware is acting on the behalf of adversary.
Broken cryptography generally result in these cases:
Information Theft
Intellectual Property Theft
Code Theft
Privacy Violations
Reputational Damage.
Real-World Case:
Sometimes ago an alert from DHS Industrial Control Systems’ Cyber Emergency Response Team and the Philips advisory warned users of a possible vulnerability in the Philips HealthSuite Health Android app.
The issue which was tracked back to inadequate encryption strength, opened the app to hackers who could get access to users’ heart rate activity, blood pressure, sleep state, weight and body composition analysis, etc.
Best Practices to Avoid:
To solve this one of the most commonly occuring OWASP Top 10 Mobile risks, developers must choose modern encryption algorithms for encrypting their apps. The choice of algorithm takes care of the vulnerability to a great extent.
If the developer is not a security expert, they must refrain from creating own encryption codes.
M6: Insecure Authorization Risks
In this case, the threat agents are able to access someone else’s application typically via automated attacks which use custom-built or available tools.
It can lead to following issues:
Information Theft
Reputational Damage
Fraud
Real-World Case:
The Information security specialists at Pen Test Partners hacked Pandora, a smart car alarm system. In theory, the application is used to track a car, cut off the engine if stolen and lock it until police arrive.
On the other side of the coin, a hacker can hijack the account and get access to all the data and the smart alarm functionalities. Additionally, they could:
Track vehicle movements
Enable and disable alarm system
Lock and unlock car doors
Cut the engine
In the case of Pandora, hackers got access to everything that was talked about inside the car through the anti theft system’s microphone.
Best Practices to Avoid:
The QA team must regularly test the user privileges by running low privilege session tokens for the sensitive commands.
The developer must note that the user authorization schemes go wrong in the offline mode.
The best way to prevent this risk is to run authorization checks for permissions and roles of an authenticated user at server, instead of the mobile device.
M7: Poor Code Quality Risks
In these cases, untrusted inputs are passed by entities to method calls made in the mobile code. An effect of this can be technical issues which can lead to degradation of performance, heavy memory usage, and poor working front-end architecture.
Real-World Case:
WhatsApp last year patched a vulnerability that hackers were taking advantage of for installing surveillance malware called Pegasus Spyware on smartphones. All they had to do was place a WhatsApp audio call on the targeted phone numbers.
Within a simple few steps, hackers were able to get in the users’ devices and access it remotely.
Best Practices to Avoid:
According to the OWASP secure coding practices, the code should be rewritten in the mobile device instead of fixing them at the server side. The developers must note that bad coding at the server side is very different than poor coding at client level. Meaning, both weak server side controls and client side controls should be given separate attention.
The developer must use third party tools for static analysis to identify buffer overflows and memory leaks.
The team must create a third-party libraries list and check it for newer versions periodically.
Developers should see all the client input as untrusted and validate them irrespective of whether they come from users or the app.
M8: Code Tampering Risks
Usually, in this case, an attacker exploits code modification via malicious forms of the apps hosted in the third-party app stores. They might also trick users into installing an application through phishing attacks.
Best Practices to Avoid:
The developers must make sure that the app is able to detect code changes at runtime.
The build.prop file must be checked for the presence of unofficial ROM in Android and to find out if the device is rooted.
The developer must use checksums and evaluate the digital signatures to see if file tampering has taken place.
The coder can make sure that the app keys, code, and data are removed once tampering is found.
M9: Reverse Engineering Risk
An attacker typically downloads the targeted app from the app store and analyzes it inside their local environment with a suite of different tools. Following which, they are able to change the code and make the app function different.
Real-World Case:
Pokemon Go recently faced the security breach glances when it was found that users had reverse engineered the app to know the vicinity of the Pokemons and catch them in minutes.
Best Practices to Avoid:
The best way to safeguard an app against the risk, according to OWASP mobile security, is to use the same tools as the hackers would use for reverse engineering.
The developer must also obfuscate the source code so that it gets difficult to read and then reverse engineer.
M10: Extraneous Functionality Risk
Usually, a hacker looks at the extraneous functionality inside a mobile app in order for discovering the hidden functionalities in the backend systems. The attacker would exploit extraneous functionality from their own systems without any end-users involvement.
Real-World Case: The idea of Wifi File Transfer app was to open port on Android and allow connections from the computer. The problem? An absence of authentication such as passwords, meaning, anyone could connect to a device and get its full access.
In-memory and NoSQL is a database combination that is being used by a number of businesses, across industries by companies relying on a plethora of architecture patterns.
The combination has also grown to become a favorite of applications dealing in real-time events and unstructured pool of data, like in the case of Machine Learning based applications.
A database that has emerged as an ideal name in the combination category is Aerospike database.
The enterprise grade database solves a series of challenges: The inconsistency of traditional NoSQL, Relational systems not having enough performance, and Mainframe being too costly and difficult to reach the internet scale.
In order to know how these advantages would translate into business benefits, it’s first imperative to understand what In-memory NoSQL means.
What is an in-memory NoSQL database?
Let us divide the concept into two parts: In-memory and NoSQL database for a better understanding.
What is NoSQL?
There are two database types: SQL and NoSQL. SQL databases are table based and work with a predefined schema. Meaning, developers have to feed in data in the form of a table (rows and columns) in the database. Additionally, a predefined schema (layout) has to be maintained.
The structure comes in extremely handy when the entities and the kind of data that they work with is static. Example: in case of Uber and Instagram, the information related to users and businesses are devised in a static format, thus relying on SQL.
While practical in a variety of conditions, they come with limitations, mainly around the need to follow set guidelines and layouts in terms of data input.
NoSQL was introduced to solve these issues.
They are anything but table based: key-value pairs, document based, or graph databases. They work around unstructured data. Meaning, nothing has to be predefined by the developers as queries for the database. Any form of data – image based, paragraphs, etc can be used.
It is devised for multiple operational needs – real-time apps which interface with the customers or extend support to APIs in microservice pattern, and is heavily used in big data analytics. NoSQL enables high-performance, agile information processing at massive scale: a key feature for new class of operational databases. Apart from Aerospike, HBase and Caasandra are two of the best NoSQL databases.
What is in-memory?
There are two types of databases: One that relies on disks and SSDs for saving data and another that uses memory or RAM to save the data. In-memory databases are the latter. These databases are used in cases where the data has to be fetched in real-time (a feature that their counterpart doesn’t offer).
But since the data is stored on memory, there’s always a chance that the data might get lost when the server fails or faces a downtime. To handle such situations, the majority of in-memory databases persist data on disks by saving operations in a log or through screenshots.
Now that we have looked into what in-memory NoSQL databases stand for, let us get our attention to Aerospike.
Aerospike Database Explained
It is a scalable, distributed database. The Aerospike NoSQL database architecture is devised to fulfill three primary objectives:
Creation of a scalable, flexible platform for the development of web-scale applications.
Offer the reliability and robustness (as in ACID), which is expected from the traditional databases.
Offer operational efficiency with minimum manual need.
Aerospike Architecture
There are a number of elements and features which separates Aerospike database structure from other NoSQL databases. But, one key differentiator that makes it the first choice of world’s top companies is Aerospike’s hybrid memory architecture (HMA).
The index in case of HMA is saved in-memory while the data is stored in a persistent SSD and read from the disk. This, in turn, saves the space occupied in RAM, while keeping the data securely stored in the SSD.
The HMA in backend database in Aerospike architecture offers sub-millisecond latency and high performance with very less hardware spend. This results in lowering the total cost of ownership, enabling massive scaleup at low cost than pure RAM. This helps in the creation of rich and compelling UX which are key to determining success in the digital age.
Benefits of Aerospike Database for Business
Replaces Cache
One of the key aerospike database advantage lies in high throughput and low latency makes it an ideal cache replacement platform. Cache is best suited when you work with static data. But, if the data is constantly changing, you will either have to deal with differences in database and cache or overwhelm database with writes.
Compared to Redis and Memcache, Aerospike data model comes with a built-in clustering which uses high performance SSDs. It also comes with the functionality of automatic cluster and transparent resharding, done through the mode of Aerospike Management Console (AMC).
User Profile Store
When developing a marketing or advertisement app, you will have to store the users’ profiles. These profiles will come with information on recent user behaviours, partner cookies, segments loaded from analytics system, and a plethora of other data. The data in this category is usually between 1 to 10 KB. But, additionally, you will also require other frontend data such as – campaign budget, cookie matching, and status.
Optimized for Flash, user profile storage becomes one of the primal Aerospike use cases. It has helped form the user store for a number of popular advertising agencies such as Nielsen, AppNexus, Adform, and The Trade Desk. It is also much cheaper to operate Aerospike with large-terabyte scale compared to other databases.
Recommendation Engine
For a recommendation engine to work right, you would need to use innovative mathematical formulas along with domain based knowledge for increasing the online engagement. If you are planning to develop one from scratch, you would require a fast data layer – one that supports various requests for every recommendation. It will also have to be flexible for you’d either need greater throughput or greater data as the system would evolve.
Aerospike in-memory database, with its following features makes up for an excellent database:
Large lists for recording behaviour efficiently
An optimized Flash support for handling datasets to petabytes from terabytes
Detecting fraud is every business’s goal, especially when it is their users money or private information is at stake.
Ideally, an application gets 750 milliseconds to decide whether or not an event or transaction is fraudulent. Within this time span, a user profile and the transaction made has to be validated according to the rules set by data scientists. A single request more often than not leads to several database lookups. In such a situation, latency is the key.
When working on advanced algorithms that fraud detection requires, the tech stack is generally made of advanced libraries: ones that cannot easily push compute in databases which use SQL. Aerospike, with its low latency and NoSQL become an ideal database for such use cases.
Messaging and Chat
Messaging has become ubiquitous to mobile app usage. The definition of an ideal chat platform development is one that is available 24*7*365, have zero downtime, carry the functionality to share multiple data types, provide the option to save the chat history, all the while keeping it secure.
The fact that you can feed in different data types in Aerospike makes it fit for the job. But, it also comes with other benefits, such as:
Predictable performance against large transaction volumes
Industry-topping uptime and availability
Scalability with lower latency for handling increasing loads
Significantly low TCO
The Aerospike backup and restore function for cluster data
Internet of Things
In the IoT environment, the IT system of an organization must collect and respond to over millions of inter-dependent processing events every single day coming in from thousands of devices, sensors, and apps.
The input types might include temperature, location, health, fingerprint, vibration, pH, flow, or even facial recognition. These inputs are even interconnected for providing enhanced monitoring, controlling, and feedback purposes.
The system latency, which collects this data should be extremely low (only a few milliseconds) for making the data available to the IoT app.
For the IoT trends 2020 to actually come true, it will be of prime importance that low latency is maintained and there is little to zero downtime, even if it is in the name of maintenance. Aerospike for big data analytics comes with the feature set to meet the low latency, high uptime and performance need of IoT.
Vulnerabilities are the anomalies such as programming errors or configuration issues of the system. Attackers exploit the weaknesses in the system and can, in turn, disrupt the system. If these vulnerabilities are exploited, then it can result in the compromise of confidentiality, integrity as well as the availability of resources that belong to the organization.
How Can We Detect and Prevent These Vulnerabilities?
Vulnerability assessment is the risk management process that defines, identifies, classifies, and prioritizes vulnerabilities within computer systems, applications as well as network infrastructures. This helps the organization in conducting the assessment with the required knowledge, awareness, and risk posture for understanding the cyber threats. Vulnerability assessment is conducted in two ways.
Types of Vulnerability Assessment
Automated Testing
Automated tools such as Vulnerability scanning tools scan applications to discover cyber security vulnerabilities. These include SQL injection, Command Injection, Path Traversal, and Cross-Site scripting. It is a part of Dynamic Application Security Testing that helps in finding malicious code, application backdoors as well as other threats present in the software and applications.
Manual Testing
Manual testing is based on the expertise of a pen-tester. They are the experts that dive deep into the infrastructure that will help them in finding out the vulnerabilities that cyber attackers can exploit.
Following are the types of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing:
Different Types of Manual Testing
Application Security Testing
It is the process of testing and analyzing a mobile or web application. This methodology helps pen-testers in understanding the security posture of websites and applications.
The application security testing process includes:
Password quality rules
Brute force attack testing
User authorization processes
Session cookies
SQL injection
Server Security Testing
Servers contain information including the source code of the application, configuration files, cryptographic keys as well as other important data. Pen-testers perform an in-depth analysis of the server in the server security testing. Based on this analysis, testers perform an approach to mimic real-time cyber attacks.
Infrastructure Penetration Testing
Infrastructure penetration testing is a proven method to evaluate the security of computing networks, infrastructure as well as the weakness in applications by simulating a malicious cyber attack.
Cloud Security Testing
Every organization that keeps its platforms, customer data, applications, operating systems as well as networks over the cloud; must perform cloud security testing. Cloud security is essential for assessing the security of the operating systems and applications that run on the cloud. This requires equipping cloud instances with defensive security controls and regular assessment of the ability to withstand cyber threats.
IoT Security Testing
With our increasing engagement with technology, we are becoming more advanced in incorporating technology with things that we use on a daily basis. Pen-testers are aware of the complexities and how cyber criminals exploit them.
IoT penetration and system analysis testing considers the entire ecosystem of IoT technology. It covers each segment and analyses the security of the IoT devices. The testing services include IoT mobile applications, communication, protocols, cloud APIs as well as the embedded hardware and firmware.
Which is the Better Method of Vulnerability Assessment?
Manual vulnerability assessment is better than vulnerability scanning tools since automated tools often give false results. This can seriously hamper the process of vulnerability assessment. Although automated tools make the assessment process faster and less labor-intensive, the tools are not capable of identifying vulnerabilities.
This can be far better done by observant pen testers who use systematic technology with years of experience. Manual vulnerability assessment requires time but, it is far more effective and accurate than vulnerability scanning tools. The reason behind preferring manual assessment is the lack of an in-depth understanding of the system to discover vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is always better to consult a leading cyber security company for investing in VAPT services that can help you strengthen your organization’s security infrastructure.
In the IT world, phishing is not a vague term. For those wondering “what is phishing?” it is an online identity theft. This cyber-attack is carried out by sending spoofed emails in the name of trusted sources like a bank or legitimate companies. Furthermore, the aim of this corrupt practice is to obtain credentials and financial information of the users. But with the rate of rapidly increasing phishing attacks, proper defense against phishing has to be taken.
In the cyber world, phishing attacks have risen up to 65% as compared to the past year. The level of phishing attacks has advanced so well that even top-notch companies have become phishing scam targets.
In order to secure data from any further exploitation, anti-phishing solutions have been introduced lately for defense against phishing. But before taking any step, you must know how to find a phishing email so that you are saved from phisher’s hook.
How Can You Identify A Phishing Email?
Phishers aim user’s inbox for phishing attack by sending various forms of email that convinces a user to:
Click on a link
Enter credentials like username, passwords, etc. on a legitimate-looking website
Install application or software on your device
Open a doc file or many other tricks to lure users
The motive of sending such emails is to trick users to download malware on their devices. By doing this, the attacker would have the ease of remotely controlling the user’s device so as to steal all the important data.
To avoid such attacks, you can follow tips that will help you to protect against phishing attacks.
Guidelines for Best Defense Against Phishing
Updated software and OS:
Always keep the version of your operating system up to date so as to avoid any sort of malware attack for the best phishing protection. Outdated software or operating system hold way too many bugs and hence become an easy target of phishing attacks.
Avoid Password Auto-Fill Service:
Phishers are experts in using platforms to attempt a phishing attack, so it is better to skip a “save password” option if it pops up on any website. This step will help in keeping your information secure from hackers.
Two-Factor Authentication:
It is better to adopt the latest technologies for security purposes if it comes from the right sources. Two-factor authentication is a widely used technique to secure data and financial information from unauthorized access.
Use Google Drive for Suspicious Documents:
In case you find any document sent from an unknown sender or receive a dubious-looking file, ensure to upload it on Google Drive. This would turn document into image or HTML, which in turn would avoid the installation of malware on your device.
It takes decade building a trusted brand that is vibrant and customer engaging. As a trusted online brand, your customers expect you to secure their private information and go over-and-beyond in defending them from becoming targets of cyber crooks.
In this era of a developing digital age, brand owners are at a huge risk of falling victim to a multitude of online threats. It takes only a mere moment of negligence and online fraud to leave a brand devastated from its reputation.
If this wasn’t obvious enough, the internet has already become a new arena for brand-related crimes such as identity thefts, virtual crimes, and data hacks. Over 150 brands are hijacked because of phishing attacks, every month. Cybersquatting crimes alone cost over $1 million annually to the brand companies.
Building and maintaining social media accounts, websites, and email campaigns for targeting prospects and clients is highly important to promote a business and a brand on an online platform. These things are highly essential, but they also make brands vulnerable and open to the prevailing cyberattacks.
There are miscellaneous ways to fall victim to unethical online practices and tools that not only affect the brand image but the entire organization. Online brand abuse, brand counterfeiting, cybersquatting, and cyber threat activities are needed to be combated with the right investigation and proper brand monitoring tool to prevent the loss of revenue, secure brand reputation and maintain customer trust.
Time for Online Brand Protection
With innovation and advancement in technologies, there should be proper strategies for domain and brand protection online. Every organization should be vigilant towards the online security of its brand and must make sure that their brand is not being used as a vehicle of impersonation and fraudulent messages.
Cyber fraud comes in an ever-evolving array of various forms. From phishing websites, brand impersonation to identity theft, many comprehensive cybercrimes can cause serious financial loss to an organization.
Brand protection online is critical and it goes beyond setting up firewalls or antivirus software. It requires having employees who are aware of the existing cybersecurity threats and are proactive towards the impending cyberattacks. Along with that, it includes the proactive scanning of public domains and Dark Web servers to identify any evidence of brand counterfeiting.
The main role of online brand protection is to find and shut down fake social media profiles or websites that use your company’s logo or message people in your brand name to steal login credentials and access to your secure networks.
Top 3 Online Brand Protection Solutions
With the help of the right tools in the right place, protect your brand online along with your digital assets against brand infringements. Here are some simple tips and brand protection solutions that an organization must implement and follow:
Website SSL
Website Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a security standard that creates an encrypted link between the web server and browser or a mail server and mail client. With website SSL, customers can more easily determine whether they have landed on your legitimate and official website or not. Websites that hold private data must have this implemented so that customers are aware of the information that is processed through that site is encrypted and authenticated.
Brand Monitoring
Make sure that no negative publicity of your brand is existing on the web and is not leaving a wrong impact on your customers. Proactive brand monitoring on the web is a smart way to identify and check the fraudulent cyber activities taking place against your brand.
Take Down of Phishing Websites
According to Webroot, around 1.5 million phishing websites are created every month. Brands on an online platform need to stay protected from cyber fraudulent activities like brand infringement and phishing websites/mobile applications.
Will this year be as tumultuous as 2020? Let’s hope not. But one thing won’t change: In 2021, as is the case every year, companies will continue to be challenged by new or evolving cyber security threats.
We expect 5 security trends that emerged or accelerated last year to demand even more attention from organizations this year. Here is a look at key threats, potential vulnerabilities and defense strategies in 2021:
Zero Trust becomes more relevant than ever
While the concept of Zero Trust has been around for over a decade, only now is it becoming a viable defense strategy. Today, every endpoint including remote PCs, smartphones, tablets, IoT sensors, containers, virtual systems and cloud resources is susceptible to attacks.
Traditional defenses are meaningless in an environment where the traditional network perimeter is slowly dissipating. It’s not just a matter if these assets will be compromised, but when. The only safe response is to trust nothing on your network and assume the environment is compromised. The premise of Zero Trust management is that to be secure, organizations must verify and authenticate access in a continuous manner.
In 2021, the rise of machine learning is paving the way for Zero Trust. Machine learning can be used to help document baseline user behavior and detect anomalies in actions. For example, if you normally log in from London, but today you’ve logged in from Hong Kong, the system recognizes this anomalous behavior, blocks access and triggers an alert to raise an investigation.
Applying Zero Trust will become an integral part of every organization’s business behavior as a way to future-proof the protection of data and assets.
As a result of government-mandated stay-at-home orders, remote working grew faster than anyone could have foreseen in 2020. Approximately 40 percent of the global workforce shifted to working from home or other remote locations. What’s more, the transition happened practically overnight and is expected to settle into a long-term trend.
Traditional security strategies, developed for staff working in the office within the same corporate network, are insufficient. In many cases, home routers and networks are not secure, and family members’ computing devices may be easily compromised.
What’s needed in 2021 is a new way of operating to work securely from remote locations. It will require changes in behavior, such as keeping access to corporate data from a home network to a minimum. Organizations must verify access to data and assets using various authentication methods that require human intervention and leverage new technologies, such as remote browsing or remote terminals, where no actual data is transmitted to the computing device at home.
Such changes, once unthinkable and impractical, will be crucial to securing work-from-home environments.
5G wireless offers new opportunities, enables new threats
After being touted for years as wireless networking’s next big thing, 5G is finally becoming mainstream. Apple introduced its first 5G-capable iPhones in late 2020, and telecom providers worldwide have rolled out 5G services.
5G computing with its high-speed connections and improved network reliability should empower organizations to quickly deploy compute servers, IoT sensors and other devices on the edge in remote hubs.
The features of 5G, however, can pose new threats if not well-managed. If infrastructure is not carefully secured, adversaries can exfiltrate information very quickly and in large amounts from compromised environments, thanks to 5G’s blazing-fast bandwidth.
Another concern is that most endpoint devices are not designed to deal with a high-volume network, which means adversaries could use 5G bandwidth to easily overwhelm network assets through denial-of-service attacks.
Ransomware moves one step ahead
Ransomware dominated headlines in 2020 and security experts have developed new tactics for responding to these threats. For example, by studying ransomware campaigns, security teams can deduce the decryption keys needed to unlock systems without having to pay the ransom.
Cyber criminals are aware of such countermeasures and are already developing ransomware encrypted at the code level. This means cyber security teams will have to wait for the code to run before it can be studied, thus slowing the development of countermeasures.
Attackers are also rewriting ransomware code to infect the firmware of computing devices and ensure perpetual presence in the victim’s environment. Code that is running at the firmware level may not be detected, stopped or removed by antimalware software.
As this malware cannot be simply overwritten, once a device is infected, the hardware must be either replaced or sent back to the factory to reinstall the firmware.
Cyber analytics drives more data-driven decisions
Organizations are starting to understand the importance of using data to improve business decisions. Operational data can give insights about potential growth and cost-savings opportunities, and how to optimize business process.
Security operations, like other parts of business, are harnessing operational data to understand how business events tie to security events. Organizations can use cyber analytics and AI to predict when and where attacks are most likely to occur so they can then focus their investments to achieve the greatest protection.
AI systems must target aspects of operations unrelated to security that can be correlated with past security events. For example, an AI system might determine that most attacks occur 3 days before quarterly financial results are due to be publicly reported. With that information, organizations can proactively bolster security protections prior to the next public disclosure.
In 2021, such pre-emptive knowledge will help organizations plan ahead. However, to succeed they must thoroughly analyze and understand all the data they collect about operations and business behavior.
Thankfully, 2020 is behind us, but new threats await. Protecting enterprises this year will require new cyber defense strategies and tactics, and better threat intelligence.
Building a revolutionary mobile application is only the first step in mobile app development. Once you’ve built an app, there are thousands of mandatory processes that follow app development. One of those many crucial steps in mobile app security.
In this article, we will explore what are the essential mobile app security practices that you ought to implement after the development is finalized.
Over the last decade, we all have witnessed how the mobile app development industry has grown but so have cybercrimes. And these crimes have led us to a stage where it is not possible to submit an app to Play Store or App Store without taking certain measures to secure it.
However, getting towards what the security measures entail, we first need to understand why there is a need for taking these actions and what are the potential app security issues that plague the mobile app development industry. For a real-life estimate, let us look at the facts:
There is still more to mobile app security than safeguarding them against malware and threats. Let us first identify some of the OWASP mobile app security threats to understand the security measures better.
Why do we need Mobile App Security: Potential Threats & Their Solutions
The threats that present themselves in the app development world although are malicious, can be solved with simple steps to securing a mobile application. Let us take a look at what are the major mobile app security issues.
1. Faulty server controls:
The communications that take place between the app and user outside the mobile phone device happen via servers. And such servers are primary targets of hackers throughout the world. The main reason behind the vulnerability of a server is because sometimes developers overlook the necessary server-side security into account. This may happen due to a lack of knowledge about security considerations for mobile applications, small budgets for security purposes, or the vulnerabilities caused due to cross-platform development.
Solution:
The most crucial step in safeguarding your servers is to scan your apps with the help of automated scanners. These scanners can, otherwise, be used by hackers to dig out vulnerabilities in your apps and exploit them. Automated scanners will surface the common issues and bugs which are easy to resolve.
2. The absence of Binary protection:
This is also one of the prime OWASP app security issues to address because if there is a lack of Binary protection for a mobile app, any hacker or an adversary can easily reverse engineer the app code to introduce malware. They can also redistribute a pirated application of the same and inject it with a threat also. All of this can lead to critical issues such as data theft and damage to brand image and resultantly revenue loss.
Solution:
To safeguard Binary files, it is important to deploy binary hardening procedures. As a part of this procedure, binary files are analyzed and accordingly modified to protect them against common mobile app security threats. This procedure fixes the legacy code without involving the source code at all. It is crucial to ensure security coding for the detection of jailbreaks, checksum controls, debugger detection control, and certificate pinning while working on mobile app security processes.
3. Data Storage Insecurity:
Another big loophole that is common in Mobile app security is the absence of a safe data storage system. In fact, it is common for mobile app developers to rely upon client storage for internal data. However, during the possession of a mobile device by a rival, this internal data can be very easily accessed and used or manipulated. This can lead to several crimes like identity theft or PCI (external policy violation).
Solution:
One of the app security measures to consider here is to build an additional encryption layer over the OS’s base-level encryption. This gives a tremendous boost to data security.
4. Inadequate protection for Transport layer:
The transport layer is the pathway through which data transfer takes place between the client and the server. If the right mobile app security standards are not introduced at this point, any hacker can gain access to internal data to steal or modify it. This leads to severe crimes like identity thefts and frauds.
Solution:
To reinforce transport layer security, you should incorporate SSL Pinning in iOS and Android apps. Along with this, you can use industry-standard cipher suites instead of regular ones. Additionally, avoiding the exposure of user’s session ID because of mixed SSL sessions, alerting the user in case of an invalid certificate, using SSL versions of third-party analytics are common practices that can savethe users from a dangerous breach of security.
5. Unintended Leakage of data:
Unintended data leakage happens when critical mobile applications are stored in vulnerable locations on the mobile device. For example, an app is stored where it can easily get accessed by other apps or devices which ultimately results in the data breach of your app and unauthorized data usage.
Solution:
Monitoring common data leakage points such as logging, app background, caching, Browser cookie objects, and HTML5 data storage.
Besides these 5 mobile development security threats, there are some other commonly occurring roadblocks in the way of building secure mobile apps. Here they are:
Absence of multi-factor authentication – The process provides multiple layers of security before letting a person inside the application. It could be answering a personal question, OTP, SMS configuration, or other measures. The absence of multifactor authentication can lead to several issues which makes it a crucial part of answering how to make an app secure.
Inability to encrypt properly – A important element of mobile application security best practices is ensuring proper encryption. The inability of it can lead to code theft, intellectual property theft, privacy violation, among multiple other issues.
Malicious code Injection – User-generated content such as forms is often overlooked as a threat. Suppose a user adds in their id and password, the app then communicated with the server-side data to authenticate the information. Now the apps which do not restrict the character a user inputs open themselves to the risk of injecting code to access the server.
Reverse engineering – It is every secure mobile application development nightmare. The approach can be used to show how an app works in the backend and reveal the encryption algorithms while modifying the source code, etc.
Insecure data storage – insecure data storage can happen in multiple places inside an app – cookies, binary data store, SQL database, etc. If a hacker gets access to the database or device, they can alter legitimate apps to take out information to the machines.
After seeing the general threats which plague all the mobile applications and some of the Best mobile app security practices to follow for avoiding these issues, let us move on to the specifics about the Android and iOS mobile application security.
How to Make Android Apps Secure?
Some of the effective Android app security best practices to opt are:-
Encryption of data on External Storage –
Generally, the internal storage capacity of a device is limited. And this drawback often coerces users to use external devices such as hard disk and flash drives for safekeeping of the data. And this data, at times, consists of sensitive and confidential data as well. Since the data stored on the external storage device is easily accessible by all the apps of the device, it is very important to save the data in an encrypted format. One of the most widely used encryption algorithms by mobile app developers is AES or Advanced Encryption Standard.
Using Internal Storage for Sensitive Data –
All the Android Applications have an internal storage directory. And the files stored in this directory are extremely secure because they use MODE_PRIVATE mode for file creation. Simply put, this mode ensures that the files of one particular app cannot be accessed by other applications saved on the device. Thus, it is one of the mobile app authentication best practices to focus upon.
Using HTTPS –
The communications that take place between the app and the server ought to be over an HTTPS connection. Numerous Android Users often are connected to several open WiFi networks in public areas and using HTTP instead of HTTPS can leave the device vulnerable to many malicious hotspots which can easily alter the contents of HTTP traffic and make the device’s apps behave unexpectedly.
Using GCM instead of SMS –
In the time when Google Cloud Messaging or GCM did not exist, SMS was used in order to push data from servers to apps but today, GCM is used largely. But if you still have not made the switch from SMS to GCM, you must. This is because SMS protocol is neither safe nor encrypted. On top of it, SMS can be accessed and read by any other app on the user’s device. GCM communications are authenticated by registration tokens which are regularly refreshed on the client-side and they are authenticated using a unique API key on the server-side.
Other major mobile app development security best practices can include, Validation of User input, Avoiding the need for personal data, and usage of ProGuard before publishing the app. The Idea is to secure app users from as much malware as possible.
How to Make iOS Apps Secure?
Some of the iOS app security best practices to follow are:-
Storage of Data –
To greatly simplify your app’s architecture and improve its security, the best way is to store app data in memory instead of writing it on a disk or sending it to a remote server. Although if storing the data locally is your sole option, there are multiple ways to go:-
Keychain:
The best place to store small amounts of sensitive data which doesn’t need frequent access is Keychain. Data that is stored in keychains is managed by the OS but is not accessible by any other application. – Caches: If your data does not need to be backed up on iCloud or iTunes then you can store the data in the Caches directory of the application sandbox. – Defaults system: The defaults system is a convenient method for storing large amounts of data.
Networking security :
Apple is known for its security and privacy policies and for years, it has worked to reach this level. A few years ago, Apple had introduced App Transport Security which enforces third-party mobile apps to send network requests over a more secure connection, i.e., HTTPS.
Security of Sensitive Information –
The majority of mobile apps use sensitive user data such as address book, location, etc. But as a developer, you need to make sure that all the information that you’re asking the user for is, in fact, necessary to access and more importantly, to store. So, if the information you require can be accessed through a native framework, then it is redundant to duplicate and store that information.
We have now seen both Android and iOS mobile app security Practices for a Hack-Proof App. But no development can be so easy as it is written about. There are always certain challenges that are faced during a process. Let’s move forward and learn about the challenges which are faced and solved by almost every top app development companies in USA.
Challenges Associated With Mobile App Security
There is a proven record of how vulnerable mobile apps can be if not enough measures are taken for their security from external malware. Following are the challenges that can arise anytime if the mobile app security testing is not completed as per the requirement.
Device Fragmentation –
There are essential processes to be followed before the release of an application on the app stores. It is necessary to diversity of devices that cover different resolutions, functionalities, features, and limitations into your mobile app testing strategies. Detection of Device specific vulnerabilities can put the app developers one step ahead in app security measures. Not only devices but different versions of popular OS’s is an important step to cover before the app release to cover all the possible loopholes.
Weak Encryptions –
In the case of weak encryption, a mobile device is vulnerable to accepting data from any available device. Attackers with malware are in constant search for an open-end in public mobile devices and your app can be that open end if you do not follow a strong suit of the encryption process. So, investing your efforts into strong encryption is also one of the finest ways to make a hack-proof mobile app.
Weaker hosting controls –
It happens mostly during the development of a business’s first mobile app, which usually leaves the data exposed to the server-side systems. Therefore, the servers which are being used to host your app must have enough app security measures to avoid any unauthorized users from accessing important data.
Checklist for Mobile Application Security Guidelines
There are a number of things that every mobile app development company follows when they build secure applications. Here is a checklist that we commonly follow –
Use server-side authentication
Use cryptographic algorithms
Ensure user inputs meet check standards
Create threat algorithms to back data
Obsfucation to stop reverse engineering
There are many ways to make a hack proof mobile app, through a mobile app security audit, against the attacks from unknown sources and no amount of security measures can ever be enough. Looking into mobile app development security best practices is one way to go about it. Today, the digital world is out in the open for everyone’s use and no user is ever safe enough from malware and security breaches but these measures ensure that your personal data is safe in your digital devices.
![The Ultimate Guide to Push Notifications [2020] - WebEngage](https://content.webengage.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/09/What-is-a-Push-Notification.png)
