4 Security Challenges In The iPhone App Development – How To Face Them?

Apple has established itself as one of the top brands that millions of people want to buy its products and use in their daily life. The company is making some of the most powerful and advanced devices for its customers, making their work a lot simpler.

With the constant increase in the usage of iPhone, the demand for iPhone apps has been increased and with that, there are lots of people, who wanted to exploit all the security plans that came with the iPhone device.

However, much of the security-related news to the iPhone mainly focuses on the platform; less attention has been given to individual applications in the app store. Today, attackers are taking benefit of insecure popular mobile apps, networks and more to break into highly confidential data on mobile devices.

Moreover, they are also tapping mobile devices as a gateway to an organization’s broader, highly confidential internal network. In research by Ponemon Institute, they have found that some of the major security problems in the ways that various organizations develop and deploy mobile applications for their customers.

While in the process of developing different types of iPhone apps, lack of security testing has made security much difficult to achieve. Approximately, every organization spends $34 million yearly on average for mobile app development. Out of the total amount, only 5% of the budget is spent on making that mobile apps secure against cyber-attacks before they are made available to users.

Do you know what are the most common security risks that are affecting iPhone apps? How to face those security challenges when you are making your first application for iPhone?

Let’s have a look at those security challenges and how you can face them:

Securing Communications To Servers:

All the applications that are known for handling sensitive information and user data will connect back to some server component. iPhone developers are facing this challenge while protecting sensitive data in transit as it crosses the Internet and sometimes even insecure wireless media.

Solution: It can be done easily using encryption, which must be implemented rightly. Real encryption comprises avoiding reinventing the wheel and making use of trusted libraries, which have been thoroughly reviewed. The SDK of the iPhone is mainly like any other SDK regarding its SSL libraries.

It is must for developers to use the URL loading library as the way the apps are using the libraries in a development or configuration will naturally differ from proper usage in production.

However, the default state of operation for the URL loading library is to fail on an invalid server certificate. While developing, it is important to make use of an invalid certificate. When they get fail to use the libraries accurately, it will result in the weak client to server communications, enabling a spiteful adversary to compromise client to server communication.

Sensitive Data And Information Undefended At Rest:

Apple’s iPhone apps are directly cut right to the heart of software functionality to deliver what all the users are looking for when they are on the move. For many apps, it can involve displaying or storing data and information.

Various iPhone applications read and show sensitive data like medical lab test results or personal and business-related data like medical test results or any other financial data.  There are various big banks that are offering mobile apps to deliver better user experience than the Safari web browser for online banking.

Such apps will handle some of the sensitive data that most users will ever have. In addition to this, these apps can provide a lot of remember me functionality, so it is important to keep data secure from hands of a hateful adversary.

Solution: The solution to this problem is to architecture design with extreme care and a risk-based approach to help decide the security posture the application has towards data storage. It is important to protect information sensitive data, which reside on the device using a combination of strong cryptography and the Apple Keychain services to protect the data while at rest.

Covering Your Application:

Do you know that the App Store might be risky for you? A right way of risk valuation of an organization’s tolerance for risk must be conducted to determine if the app store policy is catching up with and be acceptable for any of the app.

Apple is having a tight control over the App store and it will not be possible to issue a release in a very short (24-48) hour period in most cases. However, the approval process of Apple approximately takes at least a week. If the app has many issues that could cause it to fail and the approval process of the new build can take weeks to reach customers.

Solution: Regarding this problem, there is very little that they can do regarding the risk that is related with to this issue. However, one of the best ways is to ensure that developers have a clear idea and information of app store’s policy and the testing process is thorough and proactively identifying the problems, which would cause the app to fail the approval process.

Complexity Of Detecting Jailbreak And Rooting Of Device:

When it comes to jailbreaking and rooting of iPhone devices, it is much common practice across the world. Approximately, 10% of iOS devices are jailbroken across the world and it is not easily possible to prevent the rooting and jailbreaking of iPhones. And prevent is not the goal when it is about rooting and jailbreaking in today’s time. Rather than preventing, detecting and response should be the goal of this problem.

Solution: It is important for companies and organizations to have policies to disallow access or alert when mobile devices that are jailbroken or rooted interact with their assets. Considering it from a practical viewpoint, lots of developers and organizations are choosing to alert a user or administrator if a jailbroken or rooted iPhone is detected instead of exiting the app. Keeping these security mechanisms in mind can help keep spiteful code at bat and secure sensitive information.

Conclusion:

Security is one of the most important aspects of any iPhone application development. No matter whether the app is offering filters to the phone’s camera or for online banking transaction, it is must to superior security; otherwise, it can put both users and company at risk.

By addressing these iPhone app security issues, you can secure your application so that your users’ data and the information is stored securely. Your client and app users should always safe and secure while using your app as it will compel them to use your app without looking anywhere else.

When you look forward to building a secure iPhone application for your business, you can also ensure that you consult a right iPhone app developers team, who has expertise in developing iPhone apps from years.

About the Author:

Jyoti Bharwani is a content manager at Space-O Technologies that is specialized iPhone app development company. She has a keen interest in writing about mobile apps development and marketing. Even she has also started writing about Augmented Reality and Blockchain Technology. In free time, she prefers reading non-fiction books.

Find Me On Twitter | GooglePlus | LinkedIn