Protect your Business with Enterprise Mobile Security in 2022

If you are not taking enterprise mobile security seriously, look at these stats:

According to the  State of Enterprise Mobile Security 2022 Report, 75% of the analyzed phishing sites targeted mobile devices. The same report stated that 30% of the total zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in 2021 targeted mobile devices.

Security week states that mobile phishing attacks have increased at a consistent rate of 85% since 2011. What’s more, mobile phishing attacks surged by 37% in 2020’s first quarter.  

Did you notice how hackers are increasingly targeting mobile devices? Therefore, it’s time to buckle up and enhance your enterprise security measures to protect your business from such threats.

This blog discusses six measures you can take to improve your enterprise mobile security or EMS. So, read in full.

Top 6 Tips To Improve EMS or Security of Your Mobile Application

1) How to Secure Mobile Apps Against Reverse Engineering & Hacking

Reverse engineering is a process wherein individuals (usually hackers or competitors) gain access to the source code and other resources of an application (iOS/Android) for:

Here’s how you can secure mobile apps against reverse engineering & hacking:

• Use the right programming language: Use C/C++ for Android and Swift for iOS.
• Code obfuscation: Code obfuscation means deliberately making the code complex which is hard for humans to understand. This protects the code up to a certain extent from hackers.
• Secure APIs: Always use secure APIs to communicate between the server and the app.
• Encrypt Databases: Use encryption algorithms such as AES-256 to secure databases for better security. 
• Never Hardcode API keys: Always access API keys dynamically to prevent hackers from stealing them.

2) Integrate Security Throughout the App Dev Lifecycle

An enterprise application contains crucial information about all departments, from sales and marketing to accounts and HR. And losing this information could be disastrous for your enterprise.

However, if you integrate security throughout the app dev lifecycle, you can reduce the risk to a minimum. It’s because integrating security in the software development lifecycle ensures the end result:

• Has no or minimal flaws.
• Has a clean code.
• Poses no threat to the data of your enterprise.

Sounds good? Here’s how you can integrate security throughout the app dev lifecycle:

i) Incorporate Security Frameworks

When you reach the requirement/planning stage, you must incorporate security frameworks per industry standards in your SDLC. Doing this will help you follow security best practices regardless of the development methodology.

ii) Create or Subscribe to a Risk Management Process

After incorporating security frameworks, you must include reliable risk management and mitigation model. The role of this framework/model is to detect, assess and deal with the risks to your application.

3) Vigorous Testing of the Software 

While all developers know the importance of testing, they usually ignore it because of time constraints and other issues. However, it would help if you didn’t do that. After all, testing helps you detect flaws in your code or the software, right?

So, make sure to include vigorous testing (alpha, beta, and pen testing) in your software development lifecycle at whatever stages possible. Also, try to execute two or more sessions of complete application testing to boost the state of enterprise mobile security even further.

4) Make Use of Stronger Authentication

One of the most fundamental aspects of improving the security of your mobile application is user authentication/authorization. After all, that’s what decides whether the user will get access to the application or not.

You can integrate 2FA or two-factor authentication in your mobile enterprise app to strengthen your authentication process. In 2FA, a user password is not enough; the user must enter a password (something a user knows about) and a token (something a user has) for added security.

If you take the state of enterprise mobile security to another level, you can also prompt the user to set answers to common questions like “when he was born or what was his favorite sport growing up.” And when the user tries to log in, on top of 2FA, you can ask the user to answer these questions.

5) Encrypt All the Data Stored on the Device

While storing data on the device isn’t recommended, some information still needs to be stored. And this information, even if it gets deleted, can be recovered. Now, that’s both good and bad news. Good, because you can get your data back, bad, because hackers can get that data back too.

Therefore, make sure to encrypt whatever data you store on the device. Also, don’t use just any encryption technique; use a 256-bit advanced encryption algorithm to store data in the form of a secure database. 

6) Use App Wrapping

Another effective way of improving the state of enterprise mobile security is app wrapping. 

App wrapping is encapsulating or adding an extra layer of security around a particular enterprise application. 

IT admins, using APIs from EMM or using SDKs, can wrap any application on your employees’ mobile devices.

With the help of app wrapping, IT admins can enforce security policies on a particular app. For instance, they can decide:

• What data user can access through the app.
• Whether or not the user can modify or delete any data.
• What network the user can access & more.

This way, whatever happens, happens under the supervision of IT admins. And if they notice something suspicious, they can take action instantly.

Wrapping Up

Now that you have the top 6 tips to improve the state of enterprise mobile security, start implementing them right now. However, always draw a strategic plan before implementing it to ensure the best results.

Also, if you need assistance with API security testing, dynamic security testing, static security testing, or advance penetration testing, book an appointment with Appknox. 

Appknox is the industry leader in vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. We help enterprises and individual developers test their applications within minutes to ensure complete mobile security testing.