Mobile apps can be vulnerable to attacks even with one weak aspect. That’s why mobile apps need careful attention from the very beginning. It’s crucial in any case — whether you’re building your app traditionally or with no-code — mobile app security is a priority.

With mobile app security, you use best practices to safeguard your application and its data against unauthorized access, tampering, or exploitation. Here’s the good part though: you don’t need to understand encryption algorithms to build a secure app.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the core areas and best practices to secure mobile apps from attackers.

Why Mobile App Security is Crucial

Mobile app security may not feel important in the early stages of building, especially if you haven’t planned to store user data yet. But in any case, it’s important to follow the best security measures to securely scale your business.

Here are three major reasons why you should prioritize app security from the very beginning:

Protect user data and privacy

With every platform, users expect their data to be safe. Consider data such as email addresses, passwords, chat logs, profile pictures, personal preferences, and their presence on your app. Any data breach can cause substantial harm.

There are laws like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), and COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) that give users legal rights over their data.

In case of data breaches, the app creator can be held responsible. Thus, your business may have to deal with regulatory penalties and removal from app stores.

Prevent reputational damage

If a security flaw goes public, the reputational damage can be greater than the initial loss. Loyal users can find another alternative. First-time users may not even give your app a chance.

In addition, future investors and partners could avoid your business entirely. Such a loss of trust cannot be recovered easily — especially with data breaches.

Avoid financial loss and fraud

Some forms of fraud occur from technical security issues, while others stem from weak workflows and missing safeguards. Insecure login systems and saved payment methods are also vulnerable to security attacks.

Attackers could also access exposed APIs to manipulate your backend or proprietary data. In addition, using apps to test stolen credit cards is more common than you think.

If you consider the root cause, all these issues stem from weak security. It’s better to catch and fix these vulnerabilities before an attacker exploits them.

Why Mobile App Security is Crucial

Here are three major reasons why you should prioritize app security from the very beginning:

Protect user data and privacy

In case of data breaches, the app creator can be held responsible. Thus, your business may have to deal with regulatory penalties and removal from app stores.

Prevent reputational damage

If a security flaw goes public, the reputational damage can be greater than the initial loss. Loyal users can find another alternative. First-time users may not even give your app a chance.

In addition, future investors and partners could avoid your business entirely. Such a loss of trust cannot be recovered easily — especially with data breaches.

Avoid financial loss and fraud

Attackers could also access exposed APIs to manipulate your backend or proprietary data. In addition, using apps to test stolen credit cards is more common than you think.

If you consider the root cause, all these issues stem from weak security. It’s better to catch and fix these vulnerabilities before an attacker exploits them.

8 Core Areas of Mobile App Security

There are 8 common areas that can easily be accessed for a security threat. If you understand these risks, you can also lay a strong foundation and mitigate them.

1. Data storage and privacy rules

Almost every app interacts with user data. This means secure data storage is the most important element of mobile app security. Data such as personal information, account details, and uploaded files must be protected.

Here, you can consider the given suggestions:

Collect what you need: Store only the data that you need to create a good user experience. Extra data puts your app at more risk.
Classify and separate sensitive data: Keep sensitive data like email addresses, social security numbers, and documents differently than non-sensitive data.
Use strict access rules: Create and enforce user-specific permissions for any data that must not be shared.
Secure file uploads: Make sure that files aren’t publicly accessible by URLs unless there’s an exception.

You need to ensure that every file and data is stored securely with safeguards. Weak permissions shouldn’t enable attackers to access user data.

2. Authentication

Authentication verifies user identity to prevent account takeovers, fraud, and unauthorized logins. If someone tries to get access to an account using stolen identity, a strong authentication system won’t let it happen.

Consider the given suggestions for a strong authentication system:

Strong passwords: Require a minimum length and a mix of characters for user passwords to secure accounts.
Enable two-factor authentication: Use a second layer verification such as a specific code to access a user’s account to protect against stolen passwords.
Secure your login and signup flows: Validate users before allowing account access to ensure your workflows are secure.

3. Network security

When your app sends or receives data — whether it’s login activity, saving a form, or loading a page — the data travels over the Internet. This data in transit also needs to be protected with communication and network security measures.

If not protected, attackers can alter or capture the data in transit. Hence, exposing your app to risk man-in-the-middle attacks, session hijacking, or data leaks.

Here are the key considerations for you:

Use HTTPS for all data transmission: Always rely on HTTPS connections that protect sensitive data in transit.
Don’t put critical data in URLs: Any data in URL can be logged, cached, and exposed by browsers or intermediaries.
Validate incoming data from APIs: Always validate incoming requests, even if they look familiar and safe.
Secure outbound API calls: When your app is connected to other services, ensure that the tokens and keys are secure and scoped properly.

Limit transit data: Make sure to transit only the data that’s required for the task. For example, avoid sending entire user records if the task requires only the username.

4. Encryption at rest and in transit

Encryption protects data against attackers in two states: when it’s stored (at rest) and when it’s being sent or received (in transit). Good encryption practices ensure that nobody can understand the data without the appropriate keys, even with access.

Here are a few key considerations for you:

Encrypt data at rest: Critical user information should be kept unreadable at disk without proper authorization.
Use HTTPS/TLS for all network communication: Use HTTPS to ensure that the data in transit is protected from tampering or intercepting.
Don’t store unencrypted secrets: API keys, tokens, and credentials must be encrypted and not be left in plain text anywhere, even in your database.
Don’t build your own encryption system: Use well-established encryption methods instead of trying to build your own.

5. Front-end and page-level security

While most data breaches happen through weak backend and databases, data leaks are still possible through your app’s frontend. Things like hidden interface elements, preloaded data, or conditionally shown content can be found and misused by technical users.

That’s why you need protective measures for your app’s frontend as well. Consider the following suggestions:

Never preload critical data into pages: Don’t load entire datasets on your app’s pages if users only need a subset of it.
Restrict data groups: When a user searches for certain data, your app limits results to only the data that the current user is authorized to see.
Stay cautious of ‘hidden’ elements: Even hidden fields and elements can be uncovered. Avoid adding any content that you don't want users to see.
Protect API tokens and headers: Never expose private keys like API tokens on user interfaces and workflows.
Don’t share critical data on URLs: Data in URLs can be shared, logged, and accessed and thus, you should avoid sharing critical data via links.

6. Authorization and privacy rules

When a user is authenticated, authorization determines permissions on what they’re allowed to do. These permissions are for everything, from who can view certain data to who can trigger specific workflows or access admin pages.

Consider the following suggestions for authorization:

Use role-based access: Allow permissions based on a user’s role, such as ‘admin’ or ‘contributor’ instead of creating custom logic for every user.
Protect critical workflows: Use conditions for every user role so that certain actions are only available to authorized users.
Restrict visibility and functionality: Make sure access is limited at the logic as well as data level.

7. Third-party plugins and APIs

Third-party plugins can easily add new functionality to your app without having to manually program something. While these integrations can introduce powerful features, they have a downside too — they become a core part of your app.

In simple words, any flaw or misconfiguration in the tool also puts your app at risk. Therefore, you need to consider security measures for third-party tools as well.

Test plugins before using them: Poorly written code can easily bypass your app’s security measures. Before you integrate a plugin, check its reviews, documentation, and update frequency clearly.
Review API scopes and permissions: Give only the permissions that are necessary for your app to function.
Don’t hardcode API keys in the frontend: Store all your keys and tokens securely and whenever possible, use server-side actions.
Look out for changes: Updates and server changes in third-party plugins can introduce vulnerabilities. Hence, you must audit them regularly.

8. Session and token management

User sessions allow users to stay logged in to your app until the session ends. However, the sessions aren’t secured properly, they can be another security flaw.

Attackers can access user sessions, reuse expired tokens, or trick users into staying logged in to your app for indefinite access. Here are some precautions you can use to protect your app and users:

Secure your login and logout flows: Make sure that users start and end their sessions securely.
Expire sessions after inactivity: Set reasonable timeouts for inactivity after which user sessions expire on their own.
Don’t store tokens in public places: Never share critical data such as login tokens and user credentials in URLs, interface elements, or workflows.
Limit critical actions to active sessions: Prior to allowing any key changes such as password updates or account deletion, the user must be authenticated.
Monitor for unusual activity: Create systems to detect suspicious activity such as multiple login attempts and failed logins from new devices.

5 Best Practices for Mobile App Security

Strong security practices are the most crucial in the development process. Here we’ve listed five best practices to secure mobile apps, avoid common mistakes, and strengthen every aspect.

1. Write secure code

Whether you’re building with traditional code or no code, you’re designing logic either way. Any logic flaws create vulnerabilities. You can use certain practices to ensure your code is secure:

Never ‘hardcore’ sensitive values such as admin roles or API keys.
Validate user input every time it triggers workflows or modifies data.
Restrict critical actions with the ‘only when’ conditions.

Moreover, make sure that sensitive workflows can’t be triggered through unknown vulnerabilities. Think in every direction to answer one question: “How can someone misuse this feature?”

2. Use trusted tools and APIs

Confirm that all your third-party plugins come from reputable sources via reviews and documentation before adding them. Check the scope of any API keys or tokens, and then give minimum access.

You should never paste your API keys into public workflows or user interface elements. In case you aren’t sure of the plugin’s credibility, take suggestions from the community.

3. Test and monitor regularly

Even with the best practices, your app’s security needs constant maintenance. Here are several suggestions to test and maintain your app:

Review your app’s privacy rules, workflows, and database access on a scheduled basis.
Scan for misconfigurations or oversights using tools.
Check the logs for unexpected usage patterns.
Test user flows to catch any exposed vulnerabilities.

Lastly, you must keep your security patches, plugin updates, and API changes updated.

4. Secure the Google keys

If you’ve integrated Google Maps, Geocoding, or Places in your mobile app, you’ll need to secure your API keys in the Google Cloud Console. These keys are just as important as other sensitive keys.

Make sure to limit each key to only the services it needs and to your app’s package name or bundle ID. If not, attackers could reverse engineer your app to extract and misuse those keys.

5. Limit access at all levels

You want to ensure that access is limited to the user type. Create role-based permissions to define what each type of user can do. Give only enough access to each type of user that’s necessary.

The app access can be limited in different ways for your team and users. Best practices include restricting database access by environment, regularly changing default passwords, removing unused accounts, and two-factor authentication.

Conclusion

You don’t need to be a security expert to secure your app and its users. Instead, all you need to do is take the best security measures and make sure your frontend and backend code are completely secure.