Mobile App Security: Best Practices for Retail Businesses

In today’s world, it would be difficult for us to find a person who does not have a smartphone. Everyone owns a smartphone today, and they are using them for several purposes like paying utility bills, playing games, browsing different websites, online shopping, and so on. With this, even businesses are seeking help from mobile app development companies to get powerful and scalable apps developed, which can not only take their business to a larger group of people but also help them create a brand image.

What is Mobile App Security?

Mobile app security can be considered as a measure to defend and protect mobile applications and to improve the security of an application often by finding and preventing them from external threats. These threats can be in any form e.g. it can be viruses, malware, or hackers who are constantly in wait to hack personal information of a user which in turn can be used for their benefits.

Importance of Mobile App Security

With time, mobile phones have become an essential part of human life. From keeping a track of daily workouts to monitoring finances, paying bills, ordering food, and so much more, smartphones are a must these days. Also entrepreneurs, these days, are opting for mobile app marketing to take their business to all the new levels and for this, they are always in search of a proficient enterprise software development company that can carry out their vision just the way they want it to be. 

Mobile apps store and process a large amount of sensitive data to which access must be controlled in order to protect the privacy of the user and intellectual property of the company. As per the study, the period between 2015 and 2018 saw a 680% unbelievable rise in fraud transactions done via mobile apps. It is therefore important for a mobile app development service provider to give enough importance to app security right from the inception phase.

The unsecured mobile app can make your users a victim of a cyberattack, which can lead to the devastating consequences on your organization and users, such users would never trust your company again in the future and will also force others to remove your app from their phones.

Today, in this article further, we are going to talk about some of the best practices, which can be followed by businesses especially, retail and e-commerce businesses to enhance mobile application security. So, without wasting much time let's begin.

Mobile App Security Best Practices for Retail Businesses

Regular Testing

It is advisable that entrepreneurs should opt for quality assurance and testing services who are experienced enough to conduct a security test on mobile apps at regular intervals. By conducting these tests you would come to know what aspects of security you need to work upon, also implementing security testing techniques would help you to identify vulnerabilities in the application which usually leave the application open to exploitation. After identifying issues, it is also essential to get them fixed. Even in case you have an in-house team of quality assurance experts, we from the enterprise mobility solution will always recommend getting an external audit done as well.

Containerization Technique

Containerization can be considered as one of the different approaches to mobile app security. In this method the critical data is stored in a separate folder in the device which can be called as a container, our sole purpose here is to protect the critical data, even in case someone has access to your device but would not be able to access the particular folder or container, which contains the critical information. 

For example, if someone has access to your device, but your critical information that has been stored in the container would still require certain credentials and passwords to gain access, which means if a person gains access to your device would not automatically get access to the container.

This approach is also known as Enterprise mobility management Or EMM

Downloading from the Right Source

Although this practice would not provide 100% safety against external threats, it would definitely ensure that chances of getting exploited are minimal. All organizations should make it mandatory that no one should download third-party applications on their device unless and until they are approved through a security testing process, while for the employees who are bringing their own device, it is necessary to educate them about various threats that could come as a consequence of it. A safe and secure enterprise apps store should be created to allow employees to access and download internal apps after proper validation.

Mobile Device Management

Mobile device management, known as MDM, is an approach where the entire device including data and apps is protected. MDM allows system administrators to implement all guidelines related to mobile security, control access to external and internal data, and impose password requirements (Minimum length, degree of complexity, and much more).

It also consists of one more feature wherein in case of emergency, administrators can even gain remote access to the mobile device and delete everything which plays an important role when the device is lost, depending on the manufactures, different MDM systems have different features, and some are more user friendly while some might offer add-ons. 

Also Read: How MDM Solutions Contributes to the Growth of Logistics Industry

Safe Payment Methods

It is always better to cross-check that the payment details and details registered on the device belong to the same person. In order to avoid misuse of credit and debit card registered on the particular device retailer’s app should only accept the payment card details linked to the owner of that particular device, if not careful it is easy to carry fraudulent activities wherein payment cards of different customers are used to make illegal purchases from different mobile apps or wallets.

Data Encryption

It is necessary to monitor traffic flowing from the app to the web servers and vice-versa once in a while. You can either ask the in-house team to do so or else you can opt for an enterprise mobility solution provider that can help you to track the data flowing in and out of the network layer. Most network experts believe that mobile device communications should be encrypted. The reason they believe so is that it is quite easy to intercept wireless communication and to perform data spoofing, the network layer carries very sensitive information, hence, it is necessary to follow the best possible security practices in order to safeguard user information and their intellectual rights.

Final Words

There is no doubt that retailers are trying extremely hard to meet customer expectations. More and more entrepreneurs are integrating smart retail and eCommerce solutions to offer great user experience and maintain user safety. Whether it is to provide attractive discounts and promotions or to provide easy payment options, everything is usually taken care of; however, they should also focus on security concerns related to the mobile app, to avoid malicious attacks that are occurring frequently these days, by implementing a complex security system which can defend any sort of external threat.