Introducing a mobile app for your business can be an exciting time. It’s a convenient way for your customers to reach you and browse the services and products that you offer. The growth of smart mobile devices means the creation of a mobile app can provide the much needed user experience and growth in purchases that you need.
An important aspect that you need to consider greatly with the creation of mobile apps, however, is the security of your users and their data. When a user signs up to your app, they’ll be providing plenty of personal information including name, address, telephone number and email address.
This information needs to be protected from hackers and scam artists. Be sure to discuss these security measures with your app developers when you’re in the creation stage of the app.
What are the risks with not protecting security for customers?
Where customers will be most at risk with their security through mobile apps is when they make in-app purchases. They’ll require entering their personal information to make the purchase and assign their order. Considering information such as address and card details will be entered, this is something that hackers will try to obtain and use for fraudulent purposes.
If your app stores this information for whatever reason, your app could be vulnerable to a security breach and hackers will use methods to try and obtain this information. One of them being reverse engineering.
Reverse engineering involves the process of duplication, and copying your app to obtain this information. This means users will download your app thinking it’s the legitimate app when in reality it’s one that they’ve created.
Data breaches can occur to all forms of businesses
Worryingly, no business is free from data breaches. With advancement in technology, hackers are using even the most advanced technologies to breach data security of even the biggest corporations we’re familiar with.
Back in April 2019, Facebook was hacked after it was discovered that their data was being stored on a server that had minimal security measures in place. Considering how large Facebook is and the number of users that it has, this made breaking news across the world.
Even the business that you think are the most secure can have data breaches, which is why it’s important to introduce technical due diligence checks.
How to secure your app
If you’re a mobile app developer or an Alexa developer, you should make yourself aware of the security measures that you need to put in place to protect the data of your users. Here are some methods to implement when creating your app:
- Data Scrambling: Data scrambling means the security protection within your app is regularly scrambled. This makes it more difficult for the hackers to breach your security
- Multi-Factor Authentication: This is another layer of protection for your users. Which means hackers would have to obtain more than one piece of information in order to obtain data
- Testing: To make sure that your app is well up scratch, test your app regularly