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Five Top Tips for Keeping Your Mobile Apps Safe


Companies that build and use mobile apps need to keep the security of their apps front and center --- but you'd be surprised at how frequently the most basic app security steps aren't taken. Insecure apps not only pose risks to businesses, but also chase away potential customers.

To make sure that your apps are as secure as possible, keep in mind these top five tips from Modern Mobility.

  1. Require that users have passwords. If the app is business-facing, make sure that passwords are required to use it. If a password isn't required, it's easy for anyone who gets their hands on the app to get into sensitive corporate data. And don't just require a password --- make sure that there are minimum complexity requirements for it as well.
  2. Limit an app's data access permissions. When someone installs an app, the app asks for permissions to access user data, such as contacts, the app's hardware, and more. Make sure that any apps you create ask only for data that's absolutely vital. If it's a consumer app, requesting access to too much sensitive information can scare away customers. And giving apps access to sensitive data can lead to data leaks.
  3. Don't allow sideloading. A sideloaded app is one that can be downloaded and installed outside of device's native app stores, That's a problem because sideloaded apps don't go through normal security checks used by stores. IT should ban any company users from using sideloaded apps. In addition, IT shouldn't let its own apps be sideloaded, because a hacker could infect the app --- and then the enterprise would be held to blame for the damage the hacked app did to consumers.
  4. Check iOS vulnerabilities. Android is much more susceptible to malware than iOS, so many companies focus their mobile security efforts on Android. But iOS can be infected as well. Pay attention to measures to secure iOS apps.
  5. Keep mobile OSes up to date. Every time a mobile operating system like iOS or Android is updated, it comes with a host of new security patches and features. Companies should ensure that all mobile devices are kept up to date.
Find out about Alpha Anywhere's easy-to-implement, robust mobile app security.
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About Author

Amy Groden-Morrison
Amy Groden-Morrison

Amy Groden-Morrison has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security and Ziff-Davis. Most recently she was responsible for developing marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth rate for analytics products at a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration Software Company. Her past accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, launching an events company on the NYSE, rebranding a NASDAQ-listed company amid a crisis, and positioning and marketing a Boston-area startup for successful acquisition. Amy currently serves as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Launch Smart Clinics, and on the organizing team for Boston TechJam. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

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The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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