Today’s world is marked by the popularity of mobile application development. The development of these applications has extended the reach of mobile phones that were previously used to make voice calls only. The popularity of smartphones in particular, iPhones, led to the development of new applications such as Internet browsing, email, and games, etc. With the rapid growth and development of smart phones and PDAs, mobile technology has entered a golden period. The growth and development of the wireless industry has resulted in an increase in the requirement for advanced applications. The latest technologies used today are Dot Net, C++, and J2EE, and many companies offer secure applications for different platforms, such as iPhone, BREW, Symbian, J2ME, etc.
Mobile enterprises also faced the challenge of meeting the growing expectations for innovative and secure mobile applications. Constantly changing mobile technology coupled with rising customer expectations put additional pressure on developers. To stay ahead of the competition, many companies are trying to create more innovative and portable applications. This has given rise to a trend of outsourcing mobile application development to companies that specialize in developing applications for wireless devices.
The list of applications that can be outsourced are: wireless internet security, video and image sharing, gaming, integrated billing solutions, location-based services, and content management. Companies are dedicated to developing applications using cutting-edge technologies and tools to provide consistent quality levels and foolproof levels. Secure mobile app development involves a variety of innovative and dynamic approaches, which can be made possible with the help of the latest mobile devices. When developing applications for mobile devices, the biggest concern is the security of wireless devices. Mobile app security is developed with the aim of protecting phones from various threats such as viruses, malware, operating system vulnerabilities, etc.
There are two types of mobile security risks. One is the category of malicious functionality which can be defined as a list of unwanted mobile code behaviors. Second, vulnerabilities, which are design flaws that expose data to interception by attackers. To solve this problem, developers have implemented a systematic approach to ensuring security in mobile applications. There are many resources available on the Internet that present case studies, code samples, and best practices for providing security in mobile applications. A lot of information can be found on how to protect against vulnerabilities in the latest smartphone and PDA platforms. Here are some steps developers can take to ensure security in mobile apps:
- Maximizing isolation by designing authenticated applications.
- Internal and external/removable storage lock.
- Work with sandboxing and sign and encrypt sensitive user information.
- Safeguards against viruses, worms, malware, and buffer overflow exploits are also involved in the security of wireless devices.
- Use the Google Android emulator, debugger, and third-party security tools for debugging.
- Configuring Apple iPhone interfaces to prevent overflow and SQL injection attacks.
- Use of public and private key cryptography on Windows Mobile devices.
- Detailed security policy enforcement with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
- Plug holes in Java Mobile Edition, SymbianOS and WebOS applications.
- Tests for XSS, CSRF, HTTP redirects and phishing attacks on mobile WAP/HTML applications.
- Identification and elimination of threats from Bluetooth, SMS and GPS services.
With the help of the above guidelines, security can be provided to mobile and wireless devices. Today’s world is very dynamic and competitive, and developers need more than just theoretical knowledge to prepare for the IT industry.