Why and how to solve mobile security problems

When we talk about mobile application security, we primarily refer to the process associated with identifying, analyzing and managing risks, which is embedded in the software development cycle. It covers technologies and practices that reduce the chances of password theft, confidential data theft, hacking and application crashes.

Continuous vulnerability analysis of mobile applications is an essential component of information security, as it allows companies to find and eliminate defects even during the development of mobile applications, before they are released.

Ideally, security analysis is a combination of manual penetration testing and automated analysis during the development cycle. This approach provides the greatest coverage of possible application vulnerabilities.

Why is mobile application security important?

Every major bank, store, airline has its own mobile application for interacting with customers - mobile access to goods and services has long become commonplace.

However, the popularity of mobile apps and their penetration into business processes is causing cybersecurity threats to grow. Hackers are increasingly launching attacks to steal personal data, steal transaction information, or block applications.

In an effort to quickly create a product and attract users, developers often write insecure code, thereby creating vulnerabilities and exposing the company and its customers to a threat. Cyberattacks can be very costly for a business: they lead to direct financial losses, damage to the company's reputation, cause fines from regulators, and customer withdrawal.

Mobile security risks are growing

Companies use quite advanced tools and practices to test their web applications for security. But when it comes to mobile software, everything is limited to periodic manual checks. This situation has developed due to the lack of high-quality tools for security analysis and a lack of skills.

Mobile software is significantly different from web applications and is potentially more vulnerable. Unlike web development that runs in a sandbox browser, mobile applications run on a device connected to a cloud server and interact directly with the operating system and other applications and store system information on the device.

Mobile solutions provide hackers with ample opportunities to attack. Today, almost a third of applications contain vulnerabilities such as storing information in an insecure place, insecure information transfer, insecure authorization, the ability to send arbitrary commands to the server, security issues in open source libraries.

Methods for identifying security flaws in mobile applications

In the IT industry, approaches have been developed to ensure the security of mobile applications - MAST (Mobile Application Security Testing) practices:

* SAST - static analysis of the application source code. Detects insecure configuration: searches for tokens, encryption keys and other sensitive data, checks the correctness of the network communication configuration, etc.

* DAST - Dynamic Application Analysis. Detects insecure network traffic, entry points that may be caused by third-party applications.

* API ST - Application API Analysis. Analysis of messages forwarded between the application and its server for the presence of sensitive information.

* IAST - Interactive Application Analysis. Monitoring the application data flow, tracking the movement of data from entry points to potentially dangerous functions.

Regular use of MAST practices for security analysis will help ensure maximum coverage of mobile application vulnerabilities.

In addition to MAST practices, the industry has adopted security standards such as OWASP Mobile Top 10, PCI DSS, CWE/SANS Top 25. Checking these standards helps to avoid basic security mistakes in application development.

How to improve mobile application security?

Five basic principles that will help increase the security of the company's mobile ecosystem:

Regular automated analysis of mobile applications for vulnerabilities in accordance with MAST practices. To do this, you can use special solutions that allow you to build automated checks into the DevOps development cycle.

Regular verification of mobile applications for compliance with industry information security standards, OWASP Mobile Top 10, PCI DSS, CWE/SANS Top 25.

Periodic penetration tests (penetration tests) for external manual verification of programs.

Regular assessments of released mobile applications to identify vulnerabilities