In today’s digital world, the saying “there’s an app for that” has never been more appropriate. Anyone can hire an amateur or freelancer to create a cheaply designed mobile app and release it on the market. But if it’s not secure, those businesses quickly lose the trust of current and potential users.
Instead of rushing to release a poorly designed app, focusing on the integrity of what you’re offering to the user is crucial. They need to be able to reach the end goal of the app through a clean, seamless process: bug-free and without concern for their device’s safety.
That all lies in your hands as the app’s developer. As you design and test your program, follow these four tips to build a more secure mobile app.
- Communicating Between Apps and Users
Every app requires a communication process between it and the user. And to optimize your app, you’ll want to ensure it can exchange data between other apps and websites, too. The key is to focus on ensuring those data exchanges are secure, as that’s where the link is weakest. If a threat is anywhere, it’s between those exchanges.
How will you establish permissions and export content? What kind of signatures are accepted, and which are automatically rejected? Is there an override, such as the user’s permissions, that allows them to transfer information to a trusted outside app?
Install coding that looks for similar activities between multiple apps and ensures the outside app is compatible with the intended action. What happens if there’s an incompatibility issue? If you don’t plan for that, it could freeze the app.
But the user isn’t going to want to provide their credentials for every exchange. That’s where you encode signature permissions and use compatible signing keys to streamline the overall experience. Only include a request for credentials when sensitive info is about to be shared, or the user wants to access premium features.
- Secure the App From Network Threats
Chances are your app will communicate with a website or another app with features accessible by cloud providers. While there’s no way to be 100% certain the network’s security is safe, you can install certain parameters to boost the stability and security of your app.
Start by creating a connection between web servers with TLS traffic. If there’s a trusted certificate authority, the interactions should be automated. However, other security settings could kick it out if your app’s certificate authority is customized or new. You’ll need to head to your configuration file and stipulate your network’s security settings in the manifest.
As you test your app throughout development, look for areas where bugs occur between exchanges. Use the debug overrides option to allow custom certificates while you’re testing. Once you’re ready to move on to the release, go back into this section and choose which certificates you trust.
- Consider WebView and HTML Messages
Users have more control over where they go when they use WebView, and what they see may not be safe for your app. Consider what your app will interact with and what isn’t compatible. Add that content to a restrictlist, and when users try to view objects on that list through WebView, the access will be limited. This is common for JavaScript interface support objects.
HTML message channels can replace the full support of JavaScript on Android 6.0 and higher devices. These channels intercept the exchanges between your app and the website, changing the JavaScript communications into an HTML message channel.
- Evaluate Your Permissions
Security through exchanges is vital, but no one wants to allow permissions for every action. Where are the essential permissions necessary? Which ones can you give up if your app no longer needs them?
Another consideration is whether you can defer permissions to the other app and maintain your program’s integrity. In many cases, the website or app the user is attempting to access has contact info and permissions that the user must enter. When that happens, your app doesn’t need to obtain those permissions.
You can also enforce one-time permissions on demand. These actions allow the user access to shared read-only or write-only data once before they need new permissions.
Signature keys and permission authority are one of the dominant components of security settings. Although you do want to pay attention to every interaction between your app and another outside source, you don’t need to control 100% of those permissions. Decide what can be deferred and which permissions are vital to your app’s security, and establish those settings from that perspective.
Conclusion
Businesses with a mobile app are frequently more successful than their non-digital competition. But if you don’t roll yours out with thorough testing and enhanced security protocols, you’re setting your app up to fail and your users to lose faith in your business. Use these four foundational tips to build a more secure mobile app and continue to be the authority in the industry you want to be. And if you are thinking of building any e-commerce app then after building the app you should need to use the best free shopify apps to increase your business sales.
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