How to secure a mobile DevOps pipeline?

What’s a mobile DevOps pipeline?

From the time a developer writes the first line of code, your app needs to jump through multiple hoops before it reaches your end users’ smartphones. This end-to-end process, which starts with mobile app development and ends with deployment or listing your app on app stores, is the mobile DevOps pipeline.

To define it formally, the mobile DevOps pipeline is a set of automated processes that help you deliver high-quality apps faster.

The goal of mobile DevOps is to break down the silos between app development (teams that build and iterate on new mobile apps) and operations (teams that handle app delivery). The idea is to make the mobile app development-to-deployment lifecycle a shared responsibility of the product/engineering organization. 

But is there any difference between web DevOps and mobile DevOps?

Yes. There is.
Even though mobile DevOps and web DevOps share core principles—automation, collaboration, and continuous delivery, they differ fundamentally in execution due to mobile-specific constraints.

To define it formally, the mobile DevOps pipeline is a set of automated processes that help you deliver high-quality apps faster to make the mobile app development-to-deployment lifecycle a shared responsibility of the product/engineering org. 

Key differences between mobile DevOps and web DevOps

Mobile DevOps is inherently more complex due to platform restrictions, device fragmentation, and app store compliance requirements. In contrast, web DevOps benefits from greater flexibility in deployment and testing but lacks the strict controls imposed by app ecosystems.

By tailoring tools and processes to mobile-specific needs, like automated app store submissions or runtime monitoring, teams can streamline their Mobile DevOps workflows while maintaining security and performance standards.

Impact of adopting the mobile DevOps approach

Mobile DevOps has become popular as it helps organizations drastically reduce deployment time and increase overall efficiency. 

Here are some of the key business benefits of adopting a mobile DevOps approach:

• Reduce time to market,
• Improve cost efficiency,
• Ship high-quality apps,
• Enhance collaboration and
• Achieve on-demand scalability.

So, why should you incorporate security testing into your mobile DevOps pipeline?

Key reasons why you should make mobile app security testing an indispensable part of your mobile DevOps pipeline:

Identify vulnerabilities

Security testing identifies vulnerabilities in your app before they can be exploited.

Comply with regulations

Security testing can help you ensure your app meets industry standards and regulations.

Build trust

Regular security testing builds trust with your user base.

Reduce costs

Identifying risks early can help you avoid the high costs of mitigating breaches.

Optimize security

Security testing can help you evaluate your app's security ecosystem, including your code, third-party code, and your security team.

If you want to release secure apps faster while detecting and responding to security vulnerabilities more efficiently, you need to integrate security testing across your mobile DevOps pipeline. 

And that’s where DevSecOps comes in.

What is DevSecOps? Why should you embrace it?

While DevOps integrates operations into your app development cycles, DevSecOps aims to combine development, security, and operations. This brings about the seamless integration of application security testing throughout the entire mobile app development and deployment lifecycle.

Suggested read: A definitive guide to creating a successful mobile DevSecOps

How can you secure your mobile DevOps pipeline? (9 mobile app security best practices)

Here are the mobile app security best practices we recommend that can help you mitigate security risks and safeguard user data and privacy: 

Data encryption

Encryption safeguards user data during transmission and while in storage. Deploy industry-standard encryption algorithms to ensure intercepted data remains indecipherable to unauthorized parties. This forms the foundation of a secure mobile application infrastructure.

Implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

In addition to login credentials, 2FA requires users to verify their identity using a one-time password (OTP), biometric verification, etc. and acts as an additional layer of security. This significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized access even if primary credentials are compromised.

Performing continuous security assessment 

Regularly test your mobile apps and continuously deploy security patches that address known and newly discovered vulnerabilities. Regular security patches prevent the exploitation of known security flaws and help safeguard against emerging threats.

Enforcing secure user authentication

Deploy sophisticated authentication mechanisms to verify user identities securely. Modern token-based systems or OAuth protocol-based methods provide secure access while minimizing the risk of credential theft. Never store passwords in plaintext.

Conducting mobile app penetration testing

Conduct rigorous penetration testing at regular intervals to identify potential security weaknesses. These simulated attacks help evaluate your application's resilience against real-world security threats and provide valuable insights for strengthening defenses.

Building user privacy controls

Design comprehensive permission systems and privacy settings that give users granular control over their data access. This transparency builds trust with users while demonstrating your commitment to protecting their privacy rights.

Following secure development practices

Incorporate security considerations throughout the development lifecycle by following established secure coding practices. This helps prevent common vulnerabilities like SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting exploits, and insecure direct object references.

App store compliance

Ensure your application meets or exceeds the security requirements of major app stores before submission. App store review processes are crucial quality controls. They maintain the overall security of the mobile app ecosystem by weeding out insecure apps.

Educating users about security

Users who understand security risks and best practices become active participants in maintaining the application's security posture. Implement an effective user education strategy through strategic in-app messaging, notifications, and interactive tutorials about mobile app security.

Mobile DevOps to DevSecOps: How to integrate security testing across the DevOps pipeline

The typical stages of the DevOps pipeline are:

• Plan
• Code
• Build 
• Test
• Package
• Release
• Configuration
• Monitor

The objective of transitioning to a DevSecOps regimen is to ship secure apps faster. To achieve that objective, the ‘shift left’ mentality becomes one of the core guiding principles of DevSecOps: 

• Incorporate security testing at every stage of the mobile DevOps pipeline
• Identify and resolve security flaws early on in the development lifecycle
• Avoid expensive and time-consuming delays at the advanced stages

By implementing the ‘shift left’ approach through DevSecOps, you add app security to teams previously responsible exclusively for development or operations.

‘Shift left’ is not just a concept. It has real-world business ramifications, too. 

Catching a security vulnerability early on in the pipeline, e.g., in the development stage, is 10 times cheaper than dealing with it later.

So, how exactly do you incorporate security testing into each stage of the mobile DevOps pipeline?

Plan

Conduct a thorough threat modeling exercise during your mobile app’s planning and design phase. 

Threat modeling analyzes your app and builds a ‘risk profile.’ It identifies potential threats and attack vectors, assesses their potential impact, and the likelihood of occurrence of each threat. This helps security teams prepare for threat scenarios in advance and prioritize security issues objectively.

When carrying out this exercise, consider using threat modeling techniques like STRIDE (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privilege).

Code

Perform Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

A Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tool can catch threats like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), buffer overflows, improper error handling, missing security controls, syntax errors, etc., without executing the code. This helps identify security flaws early in the development process.

Run automated security checks on every code change

For example, trigger a security check for every code pull request so that new code is continuously scanned for security vulnerabilities and policy violations. This helps your team catch and address potential security issues before any new code is merged with the main branch.

Implement pre-commit hooks

Enforce secure coding practices within your development team and catch basic errors before committing your code to the repository with pre-commit hooks.

Conduct code reviews

Another good idea to improve code quality is to pair your developers with security experts and conduct code reviews regularly. This collaborative effort helps detect vulnerabilities and cultivates a security-focused mindset in your developers.

Build

Implement “security as code” practice

Adopt the ‘Security as Code’ practice to embed security checks directly into your app’s codebase to ensure that security measures and compliance checks are automatically applied and enforced as your app’s code evolves. 

‘Security as Code’ also minimizes the likelihood of vulnerabilities slipping through, improving your app’s security posture.

Use automated security testing

As part of your release cycle, scan your app’s codebases to ensure they are securely integrated before merging. 

Automated testing tools will also perform integrity tests, do a deep binary analysis, and validate configurations. This creates a continuous security feedback loop, which helps developers catch and fix vulnerabilities early.

Test

Run Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scans

DAST helps identify issues that can only be detected during runtime: authentication and authorization flaws, server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities, insecure direct object references (IDOR), API vulnerabilities, security misconfigurations, etc.

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

Combining aspects of SAST and DAST, IAST focuses on finding vulnerabilities that might come to the surface as your application interacts with other systems. It utilizes sensors within the application to trace data flow during a session, pinpointing vulnerabilities while running with other systems in a pre-production environment.

Penetration testing

Conduct regular penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks and identify vulnerabilities other testing methods may have missed.

Package

Container security scanning

Establish hardened container security baselines and enforce them across all environments. Regularly scan container images to ensure they comply with security standards before use in production.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning

IaC automates infrastructure setup and configuration by enabling you to write infrastructure configuration as code. This allows your teams to define secure configurations and policies from the outset and apply security settings consistently across environments.

Verify the integrity of the final app binary

Check your app’s binary for proper code signing, analyze the final permissions set, and verify the absence of sensitive information in app resources. 

Use automated security tools to scan your packaged app for potential reverse engineering vulnerabilities and ensure appropriate obfuscation measures are in place.

Release

Compliance checks

Before release, you should verify that your mobile app complies with the security policies and app store requirements. 

Use automated security gates to 

• Validate the proper implementation of app store security guidelines,
• Check for secure update mechanisms and 
• Verify that production API endpoints are appropriately secured. 
  
  

Configuration

Verify proper implementation of environment-specific security controls

This includes 

• Validating secure storage of API keys, 
• Proper configuration of certification pinning and 
• Correct implementation of authentication mechanisms across different environments. 

Use automated tools to check for misconfigured security settings and insecure default configurations.

Monitor

Once your mobile app hits production (i.e. your end users have your app running on their smartphones), continuous security monitoring becomes essential. 

You must 

• Track security metrics, 
• Detect unusual behavior patterns,
• Monitor for potential security incidents in real-time,
• Analyze crash reports for security implications, 
• Monitor API usage for potential attacks and 
• Track user behavior for signs of compromise. 

Automated systems should regularly verify the integrity of app updates and monitor for emerging mobile security threats.

Build your DevSecOps toolchain with Appknox

The need to integrate security testing across every stage of the mobile DevOps pipeline is significant now more than ever from an enterprise security POV. 

However, transitioning to DevSecOps comes with its fair share of challenges. Putting in place the right toolchain or tech stack is arguably one of the most challenging problems to solve, as it includes:

• Figuring out the right security testing tool for each stage of the mobile DevOps pipeline
• Evaluating, purchasing, and implementing multiple software tools
• Consolidating data about threats and remediation from multiple tools across the pipeline.

That is where Appknox can help. 

Instead of relying on multiple-point solutions to build your DevSecOps toolchain, you can consolidate your tech stack with one comprehensive security testing solution. 

With Appknox at your disposal, you can:

• Perform an automated SAST scan of your mobile app’s binary
• Run an automated DAST scan of your mobile app on real devices in runtime
• Automatically test every API endpoint used/called in your mobile app
• Detect hidden vulnerabilities with human-assisted penetration testing
• Get visibility into what software components are used and where with SBOM.

Choosing the right technology solution is critical as you set out to secure your mobile DevOps pipeline.

So, stop juggling multiple tools to secure your mobile DevOps pipeline now!
Switch to Appknox—a single platform for SAST, DAST, API testing, SBOM, and pentesting.

Consolidate your DevSecOps stack. Secure faster. Scale smarter.

See how Appknox simplifies mobile app security today!

Try Appknox for free