How App Developers Can Reduce the Risk of Cyber Attacks
The evolution of technology has brought seemingly endless benefits to both businesses and consumers. But along with the progress comes a few setbacks, like the increase in the number of cybersecurity attacks for example. The end goal for attackers remains the same—monetary theft. And with around 249,662 new domains and 5,518,007 new hosts launching daily, their targets are continually growing.
In addition, the proliferation of mobile technology has given cybercriminals a new platform to carry out their attacks. Secondary or affiliate stores in the Android market can be taken advantage of to compromise official apps or create fake apps.
This makes security a critical consideration for app developers. Organizations must also regularly monitor app stores (and the entire web) to find platforms hosting apps without permission from the developer as well as apps impersonating the brand. Here are a few issues that bespoke software developers must be aware of.
Common Risks for Mobile App Developers
Data leakage
Breaches can happen for different reasons. An unintended data leak is when critical app data is stored in unsecure locations (or those that are easily accessible by other apps or users) on mobile. This is caused by issues like OS bugs or framework security negligence, which is not within the developer’s control.
However, insecure data storage leaks are something that developers and users can control. This refers to private data being stored without proper encryption or transferred through unsecured means. According to the Ponemon Institute, companies have around 28% chance of experiencing at least one incident of a breach in the next two years, so it’s a good idea to be prepared.
Social engineering
Basic trickery is also dangerous on mobile, especially since this attack can easily be done through email. Outside of malware, phishing is the most common social engineering tactic, and mobile users are the most vulnerable because they tend use email more often.
The fact that the device sometimes only shows the sender’s names may be a factor. According to an IBM study, mobile users are three times more likely to respond to a phishing attack compared to when using desktop.
Interference through unsecured Wi-Fi
The transmission of data through an unsecured Wi-Fi connection, especially public ones, is also a cause of concern. According to a survey by security firm Wandera, a quarter of corporate mobile devices have connected to open and potentially insecure Wi-Fi networks, with 4% of those encountering a malicious interception recently.
Physical device breaches
A lost, unattended, or old device can easily be infiltrated, especially if it has no strong password or encryption. The advent of the Internet-of-Things poses an even greater threat, as a breach can affect not just one device, but a slew of smartphones, tablets, wearables, and devices connected to the same network.
According to research by cybersecurity firm Raytheon, 82% of IT professionals say that unsecured IoT devices can cause a “catastrophic” data breach. It doesn’t help that some IoT devices don't generally come with timely software updates.
Weak server-side controls
Servers have always been an easy target for hackers, as they control communication between the app and its mobile users. App developers should undertake traditional server-side security considerations into account or use an automated scanner to identify common issues with the server.
The absence of binary protection
Binary protection is needed to avoid attackers from reverse-engineering the app’s code to include malware or redistribute a copy of the app that contains a threat.
Inadequate transport layer protection
Transport layer refers to the route that the data takes when transmitting between client and server. Hackers usually try to gain access to this to modify or steal the data, resulting in frauds, identity theft, and other issues.
Poor authorization and authentication
Most mobile apps don’t call for users to be online throughout their session. Hence, some apps will require offline authentication to maintain uptime, but this can create a security loophole as offline mobile apps cannot distinguish if a user has low permissions, or is an admin or super admin. Such gaps may allow attackers to operate the app or the backend server.
Damaged cryptography
Broken cryptography is due to lousy encryption or incorrect implementation, like storing keys in easily accessible locations or not hard-coding them within the binary. Attackers can exploit such vulnerabilities by decrypting sensitive data then manipulating or stealing it
Client-side injection
This refers to the execution of malicious codes through the client’s side of the app or a binary attack. Injection is done by adding code that forces a context switch, which the framework interprets as executable. The code may then either access permissions to otherwise unauthorized users or execute privileged permissions.
Affected users need to identify the source of the input and validate the data. A code analysis tool can also be used to validate whether the application is handling data correctly.
Cybersecurity Best Practices
Fortunately, there are ways that organizations and app developers can avoid falling victims to fraudulent practices.
- Make the code tough to break by securing it, while keeping it easy to update and patch.
- Encrypt all data and make sure your authentication keys aren’t easily accessible.
- Be extra cautious when using third-party libraries. Test them before use and maintain control over internal repositories during acquisition.
- Use authorized APIs only, as unauthorized ones are loosely coded and may unintentionally grant permissions to unauthorized personnel.
- Use high-level authentication, or make sure that the apps only accept strong, alphanumeric passwords that must be renewed after a few months. Using a multi-factor (a combination of static and one-time password) or biometric authentication (retina scan or fingerprint) for more sensitive apps is also recommended.
- Use the newest cryptographic protocols 256-bit AES encryption with SHA-256 for hashing. In addition, never hard code keys as this would make it easy to steal them. Store keys in secure containers instead of in a local drive or device.
- Test apps through penetration testing, threat modeling, and emulators. Fix issues and update or patch when required.
Conclusion
When new threats emerge, new solutions are needed. In this age of cyber-attacks, organizations shouldn’t wait for threats to happen before responding. Being proactive is the way, and spotting threats lurking around requires high-level visibility. There are steps and tools available to gain insight and help bring the attack into focus, even allowing supposed victims to go on the offense.
Contact us today to learn how we can secure your company's mobile apps from the get-go!
10 Ways Mobile Apps Help Grow Businesses
How often do you browse Amazon listings via their mobile app or place an order through the McDonalds app? As the digital era goes mobile, companies get into the groove of building their own mobile apps that enable customers to stay connected and get things done with just a few taps on their devices.
Your business doesn’t have to be as big as Starbucks or Nike for apps to be considered valuable to your growth. If your company has yet to start milking the flow of opportunities that mobile offers, then there’s no time to waste. A look at the following mobile device usage statistics show how mobile app development can benefit your business:
- 80% of smartphone users are more inclined to purchase from companies with mobile apps or sites that help them answer their inquiries quickly. (Google)
- 90% of users’ time on their mobile phones is spent on apps. (Flurry)
- Smartphone users are more likely to purchase from brands whose mobile apps or sites tailor information to their location. (Google)
- Compared to mobile sites, customers view 4.2x more products per session on apps. (JMango360)
Questions to Ask Before Building a Business App
The temptation is reasonable. But before you take the plunge, it’s helpful to check if your vision aligns with your mobile app’s purpose. Here are a few questions to ask before you push through with your mobile app development.
- Do your competitors have apps? What features do they have?
- How will it help your customers? What problems will the app solve?
- Do you want to enhance the experience of your existing customers or bring new ones in?
- Will you offer a customer loyalty program?
- Will it simplify processes for your internal team or your customers?
If you have solid answers to all these, then it’s time to start building your mobile app!
How Mobile Apps Can Support Your Business
Boost brand image
Mobile apps provide awareness through branded communication with consumers. Without one, your brand might come across as outdated. As with distributing stickers or calendars with your brand image, your logo and brand name are constantly plastered on your customers’ device home screens. Your customer’s regular interaction with your app also fosters trust, which conditions them to commit to your brand.
Enhance customer service
Customer service and support has evolved from person-to-person interactions to digital channels. Having the ability to access your products and services 24/7 without having to wait for regular business hours is a great advantage for customers. Plus, points for your brand if your app includes a messaging feature where they can reach you directly without leaving the app.
Personalized marketing channel
Mobile apps offer various ways where you can diversify personalized marketing campaigns, such as push notifications. You can use them to advertise new products, discounts, special events, promotions, and much more. You can also use it to remind existing customers how long they haven’t shopped with you or when their waitlisted item gets restocked.
Make consumers feel more valued
Business is all about give and take. As much as you want to increase your sales, you also want to show how much you value your customers. One way to encourage more conversions is through a loyalty program built into the app.
The more frequent they avail of your products or service, the more points they get, which they can use to claim rewards—exclusive to app subscribers. Seeing how many points they’ve earned and what rewards are on offer without going to your website will entice them to follow through then and there.
Get on that word-of-mouth marketing
One of the most powerful effects of the mobile age is its strong facilitation of word-of-mouth marketing. You can feature a referral program within the app and reward customers who share the app or your content to a friend.
Quick access to data anytime, anywhere
With every mobile app comes an array of data analytics features. Like a website, you’ll have access to all the behavioral and transactional data collected by your mobile app. This information can help your brand build insights on your target audience and improve future campaigns.
Better productivity
With automation lifting a heavy weight off employees’ shoulders, they can focus on more on their primary function: providing a great product/service. Corporate apps can make jobs more convenient and help produce more quality work. The use of a cloud service can additionally help make decision-making faster and more efficient.
Automation of processes
One of the primary reasons why businesses are jumping on enterprise mobility is because of automation. Being able to automate and streamline various tasks with minimal human intervention can save you precious time at work and reduce the risk of error.
Summing it up
We live in a fast-paced digital era, and it’s never been more obvious that smartphones and mobile apps have marked their territory in people’s lives. It’s up to businesses to adapt if they want to ride the trends and embrace this digital transformation, which is an excellent way to connect with customers, improve branding, or scale business processes more efficiently.
You don’t have to be a tech company to have a mobile app. Every brand deserves to have its own “big idea” when it comes to mobile apps. So, what’s yours?
Android Vs iOS: What Platform Should You Build Your Mobile App For?
Now that we live in a society that’s heavily reliant on mobile technology, mobile app development has seen a boom over the last few years. As smartphones get an upgrade with each brand’s release of their flagship device, apps become more advanced. They dish out more features that not only help users but also businesses to expand their operations through this platform. Apple has even trademarked the catchphrase “there’s an app for that” to let users know there is one that can actually help with just about any particular task.
According to an App Annie report, the mobile app industry earned a whopping US$41.1 billion in gross annual revenue and according to Statista, it’s projected to hit US$101.1 billion by 2020. With the population of smartphone users growing each year, the market is far from saturated.
Internet on-the-go is clearly a necessity for many users, and there’s nowhere to go but up. More companies are starting to jump into the mobile app arena after regarding smartphones as a catalyst that can grow their business. The mobile app platform has become a channel to boost sales, increase brand awareness and deliver content through branded apps.
But how do you jump into the fray? Like all things technical, there’s a process you need to go through. Here’s how it currently goes:
Choose an initial platform for the app
There are two giants that dominate the current smartphone market: Android and iOS. To find out which one has more users, a study by Gartner found that 87.8% of smartphones sold in Q3 of 2016 globally were Android. In contrast, Apple only had 11.5%. While there is a huge difference, that doesn’t mean going for Android is the better choice.
Test and get feedback
Once you’ve developed your app on your preferred platform, you will need to beta test it to an intended audience and collect feedback on how it works. During this process, you will know if everything about how the app is designed works perfectly. You will also find out if there are bugs you need to fix and improvements that would make your app better.
Make iterations and expand features
After zeroing in on the bugs and identifying what you need to improve on, you can release new versions packed with all the new features. This is a continuous process; as your business improves, so does your app to deliver the best user experience you can offer.
Build and release the app on the other platform
You will eventually be able to figure out how everything works on your initial operating system. The next step is to widen your reach, so your next move is to release your app on the other platform.
But for your initial development, testing, and optimization processes, you should be able to address the question: Which platform should you go for? Let’s weigh up the differences.
Android
The Pros: With its open-source software, Android offers app developers a low barrier of entry and allows the use of crowd-created frameworks and plugins. This results in a platform that’s more flexible, which gives developers the freedom to play around with their app’s features and functionalities. This kind of technical environment enables them to modify apps to make the necessary improvements.
As mentioned earlier, Android operating systems have a huge monopoly over the smartphone market. Although this makes Android look like the obvious first choice, there are many other factors that come into play.
The Cons: Although Android’s open-source nature is favorable for developers, it’s a double-edged sword. Android app development is more complex, taking more time to master. And while the OS covers a wide variety of devices and iterations, this benefit causes a large amount of fragmentation. This results in varied user experiences across all devices.
With its highly-fragmented platform, developers are faced with a real challenge as apps need to be optimized for various screen sizes and operating systems. This leads to a lot of compatibility and testing required, ultimately increasing development costs. For this reason, app development takes longer than those on iOS.
iOS
The Pros: iOS offers a more stable and exclusive platform for developers, making the apps easier to use. Apple designed it to be a closed platform, so the company can design all of their own hardware and software around it. This gives them the authority to impose strict guidelines, resulting to a quick and responsive platform where apps are designed well with less piracy involved.
Since 2016, over 25% of iOS developers earned over US$5,000 in monthly revenue, while only 16% of Android developers generated the same amount. And when it comes to monthly revenues earned by mobile operating systems, a Statista study estimates iOS earns US$8,100 on average per month, bumping Android to second place with US$4,900. But despite these numbers favoring iOS, a third of developers prefer Android.
Compared to the thousands of devices using Android, iOS runs on a mere 20 devices. And with both resolution and screen size playing a smaller role in the app development process, it’s quicker and easier. This results in significantly less device fragmentation.
To put things into perspective, developing an app compatible with three of the latest iOS version covers about 97% of all iOS users. This makes it a fitting choice for first-timers in app development.
The Cons: Due to its restrictive nature, developer guidelines offer a fixed set of tools to build an app, making customization limited. And with the frameworks used to build an app, many of them licensed, development costs could increase.
Additionally, iOS is widely regarded as a more mature operating system than Android, with established rules and standards. These can make approval from the App Store more difficult, taking 4-5 days for an app to be granted one.
Cross-Platform App Development
The Pros: Essentially, cross-platform app development allows you to develop two apps---both for Android and iOS---at the same time. The tools you can use reduces the time and costs related to app development on both platforms. One of the most influential frameworks currently out there is React Native.
React Native is the brainchild of Facebook with the goal of having a framework for smooth and easy cross-platform mobile development. This means no more creating apps separately for Android and iOS. All it takes is one codebase and you’ll be able to create awesome apps that work on both platforms without compromising user experience or interface.
Since cross-platform app development has a ‘write once, run everywhere’ approach, it greatly reduces costs and development time. This means there is no need to learn multiple technologies; all you need is to master a few and you can set things in motion. Initial deployment for your app will move along much faster due to its single codebase nature.
Additionally, any changes needed to be done on the app can be implemented simultaneously without making separate changes on each platform. In terms of business, it’s ideal to develop cross-platform apps to reach a wider audience, which would ultimately lead to higher revenues.
The Cons: Compared to Android and iOS, cross-platform apps do not perfectly integrate into their target operating systems. This results in some apps failing to perform at an optimal level due to erratic communication between cross-platform code and the device’s Android or iOS components. This may also result in failure when it comes to delivering optimized user experiences.
Conclusion
Your choice will entirely depend on your business goals and budget. Each of these platforms has its strengths and weaknesses, but to help you decide, you should know what’s going to work for your business. After careful consideration of your costing, the time of release, and the reach/target audience you’re aiming for, you may have a clearer picture as to where you would want to build your app.
Looking for a pro to help with your mobile app development project? Contact our seasoned experts at Intelligent Bee to learn what we can do for your business!
Are You Ready to Build Your First Corporate Mobile App?
If you haven’t noticed, there’s now an app for almost anything. It used to be that apps were associated more with mobile games, but thanks to mobile app development technologies, that’s no longer entirely the case.
Today, there are non-gaming mobile apps that enable people to get things done or get the product or service they need straight from their smartphones. For instance, people no longer need to leave their house if they want to do their groceries. Through e-commerce apps, shoppers can buy household items and then have these delivered at their doorstep – all accomplishable with a few simple taps.
The following data shows that corporate mobile apps are noticeably proliferating across industries:
- As of 2018, the number of apps available to consumers on the leading app store (Android) has already reached 3.8 million. (Statista)
- The increase in mobile app usage outside of the gaming industry is as follows: 332% for device customization slash enhancement apps; 135% for mobile newspapers and magazines; 125% for productivity apps; 81% for lifestyle and shopping apps; and 53%-54% for travel, sport, health and fitness, messaging, and social apps. (Smashing Magazine)
- Revenue from in-app purchases – which enable the app to earn money each time users purchase something within the app – amounted to $37 billion in 2016. (BusinessofApps)
- Companies like Domino’s Pizza and Zara increased their sales by 28% and 60%, respectively, with the use of their mobile app. (KnowTechie)
Keep in mind that these figures are expected to continue growing as the mobile age reaches its maturity. If that’s not enough to convince you of the value that mobile apps bring to the table, why don’t we take a look at some of the most compelling benefits they can help you realize.
The Benefits of Having a Corporate Mobile App
Brand awareness
A mobile app puts your brand in front of consumers and increases their recognition of your business, especially if you take functionality and user-friendliness seriously. Over time, as users try out your app, they’ll become more familiar with your brand, business model, and line-up of products and services. This builds up a level of trust, which makes people more likely to choose you over other businesses, which they have not encountered before.
Customer engagement
Mobile devices are so handy that people have been spending a great deal of time on them, specifically on smartphone apps, which represent about 90% of users’ mobile time. With the right app, you can reach more users online and engage them every step of the way.
Thus, it’s important that you build several features into your app, including those that customers need for placing orders, managing purchases, keeping track of promotions, and communicating with customer service, among others.
Marketing directly to customers
One of the biggest advantages of having a mobile app is it gives you an opportunity to market your business directly to customers. Think about it. A corporate mobile app is like having a whole new marketing channel.
Each time users open your app, you can send them information about new or upcoming products that you think they might be interested in. Moreover, you can use your app to capture important customer data, such as their product views or order history, and then use it to improve their experience within the app.
Added source of revenue
A mobile app can be an income-generating tool for your business. Having an enterprise mobile app not only complements your brick-and-mortar sales but also lets you monetize people’s use of your app in a couple other ways.
For instance, you can bring third-party advertisers into your app and charge them whenever someone clicks on their ad. Another monetization model for your app is to charge users a monthly subscription fee, so they can continue using the full features of your app.
Complementing your website
You might think you no longer need a mobile app if your website is up and running anyway. However, you can design your mobile app in a way that supports your website, so you can serve customers in a more optimized fashion.
Since users who have no internet connection will not be able to access your website through a browser, they can have your app installed on their mobile devices, so they may still enjoy certain functionalities through offline mode. That said, you can build an app that allows users to save the information or files they need for offline viewing or reading.
Questions to Ask Before Venturing into Corporate Mobile Apps
Before springing into action, it helps to know the ins and outs of mobile app development. Here are some questions to ask yourself before proceeding with your project:
- How much will it cost? The cost of building an app depends on several factors, including the type, size, and functionalities of your app, to mention a few. Your app’s overall goal will tie into your budget to determine what to build and how much to spend on it.
- Which platforms will the app support? Your two main markets are iOS and Android devices, but you should also take into consideration that there are Windows phone users.
- What’s your goal? In developing your app, you should also identify how it’s going to help your other business goals. Revenue wise, you can choose whether you will charge for in-app purchases, app downloads, or third-party ads. In terms of customer experience, you could prioritize between functionality and a pleasing user interface.
- Do we have the skills? You’ll need tech wizards to visualize, design, develop, test, and maintain your mobile app. If your team doesn’t have these specialized skill sets, you can outsource your mobile app project to a software development company instead.
- Is there a need being fulfilled? You’ll want a winning app that fulfills an unmet need in your target market. Your app should fill the gap between what users want and what options are available to them so far.
- How to market the app? To get your mobile app into the hands of users, you’ll need to promote it on multiple channels, such as blogs, social media, email platforms, app stores, PR events, paid advertising media, and the like.
- What integrations will you build into the app? You can leverage your app by into it, or by allowing users to log into your app using their social media credentials. This will make it easy for users to share information from your app to social sites in a seamless manner.
Conclusion
To maximize your corporate mobile app’s chance for success, you should be able to answer these questions. Now, the million dollar question is: Are you ready to build your first corporate mobile app?
It will all boil down to how useful your app is for both your business and your customers. Make your app great enough that customers would want to install and keep it in their device for as long as possible.
Want an experienced team of developers to build your next corporate mobile app? Contact the experts at Intelligent Bee today!