Reports suggest that by 2025, more than 6 billion smartphone devices will be in circulation. With the growth in hardware, global consumers will also spend more on mobile apps. Approximately $100 billion of gross revenue is projected to exceed in all app stores. This trend encourages businesses to invest in Android App Development, as it holds the leading market share.

However, App Development is the beginning of an app’s complete lifecycle. Before getting launched, there come various challenges, which you have to overcome with the help of a professional developer. Hire Android App developers from a trusted and well-renowned android app development company like us. A certified developer will thoroughly test the app’s various parameters like compatibility, performance, functionality, security, and more.

Why security is paramount for Android app development?

Many businesses tend to ignore the testing parameters before launching an app. Unfortunately, half of the companies don’t plan any budget for mobile app security, according to a report conducted by IBM. Avoiding the precautionary measures to secure a mobile app built for customers means you are exposing them to hackers – giving them access to crucial data, corporate data, and more. Cybercriminals can easily jailbreak mobile devices and reverse engineer apps to gain access to your confidential data.

An enterprise just cannot afford to risk a data breach. It can make a company’s name famous, all for negative reasons, hampering the brand’s identity, and creating a bad perception of the organization. Loss of any confidential data can also take a company into a long-drawn battle with lawsuits.

In this blog, we have curated top mobile risks and common security vulnerabilities of the android app development process. These risks include insecure data storage, improper platform usage, communication, authorization, authentication, broken cryptography, poor client code quality, reverse engineering, and more.

According to a leading report, 126 of the most popular mobile health and finance apps lack protection and are vulnerable to at least two of the mobile risks mentioned here. With the alarming rise in size and frequency of data breaches, businesses need to focus on security in these Android app development services.

What are the security factors to consider during Android app development?

Now, let’s understand the top security risks associated with Android app development, which every business must consider sooner.

Android application sandbox

To provide protection to all apps, developers suggest a layer of protection added to Android, which restricts the app from getting accessed by other resources. It is known as the “Android Application Sandbox” or “application containerization,” where the app cannot use other apps’ data and only gets played within its sandbox. This practice isolates an app’s data and code execution from other apps. To achieve it, each app is given a unique user id (UID) and apps run as separate processes with their respective UIDs. It ensures that only the processes with the same UID can share the resources and data with each other.

An encrypted file system

Encryption is one of the most effective ways to achieve data security. It helps users protect their details and crucial information. Encryption of the program or the file system permissions helps ensure that a user cannot access the data of another user even within the same app operation.

Active registration and activation process

Even after submitting the entire program, registering it, and activating the android app, there are many steps needed to be taken care of between the time of the last build and the first download. Android app developers must make sure the registration and activation processes are in place.

Reduce the number of permissions requested by the app

Android apps request permissions to access system features like camera, internet, and sensitive user data like contacts and SMS. When an app requests permission, the user sees a system dialog that notifies them about which permission group is trying to gain access. The aim of an app asking for permission is to protect the user’s privacy. However, considering these features, the system may grant a few permissions automatically. Therefore, it is best to keep the number of permission app requests as minimum as possible during the Android app development process.

Avoid storing crucial information on external storage

When the data is secure on Android devices, its security can also get assured, because no user can extract the data from the app. However, when the data gets created and stored on an external device, it drives a great risk of data loss. Some external devices like SD cards are globally written and read. Even if the app has great urgency to retrieve files from an external device, it must cryptographically verify and sign prior to the dynamic loading of the app.

Robust input validations

Input validation or data validation refers to the practice of testing an input supplied by a user or application. It helps prevent any inappropriately formed data from entering an information system. Strong input validation is mandatory for the security of an application, regardless of its platform.

Be alert while using network transactions

The risk of data theft gets higher when transactions are made via the network and the data is private to the user (mostly related to money and identity). Ask your android app development company to diligently follow practices like IP networking, telephone networking, and handling user data to minimize the risks.

Secure the native code

While using the native code, the data received over the network gets read from the files or received from an IPC. It gets exposed to security risks like buffer overflows, off-by-one errors, and use after free. Developers must use the Android SDK for app development rather than the Android NDK.

Summary

Ensuring the security measures while developing an android app must be the prime concern of every business and its app developers. Build security checks into the workflows and keep in touch with all the latest releases and trends to stay ahead of the competition and smooth functioning.

Looking for a well-renowned Android app development company? We are here to help. Let’s get connected.

FAQs

How to secure mobile apps?

Here is the entire security checklist to follow:

How to make an Android app Development more secure?

Primarily focus on the app’s transport layer. Firstly, secure an Android app – protect its data transfer layer by employing strong encryption. You can do this by using the protocols like SSL and TLS, which are simple to add to your code and are very challenging to get compromised.

What are the Android security features?

There are five key security features of an Android app:

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