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Why Security Is Key in Your Mobile-First Development Projects

Mobile-Security Remains an Issue: 85% of public mobile apps “have security vulnerabilities stemming from insecure data storage, network communications or coding practices."Mobile-first app development has become increasingly important, but plenty of businesses haven’t yet realized that they need to start paying attention to protecting their mobile apps from hacks. So concludes the NowSecure blog post “Why Mobile-First Businesses Must Invest in App Security.” The post puts it bluntly: “Mobility has revolutionized the way customers interact with brands and paved the way for mobile-first businesses. We know that attackers will follow the traffic as they always do. But while mobile app risk continues to increase, security spending continues to fight the battles of yesterday and hasn’t shifted to safeguard the mobile attack surface.”

There are plenty of good reasons why companies should make the move to mobile-first development. Statista says that in 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was mobile — and that number has certainly grown since then.

In addition, in 2018, Google started to use a company’s mobile website rather than its non-mobile website for indexing. Google calls that “mobile-first indexing.” Google explained, “Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they're looking for.”

One more important statistic: By 2021, eMarketer projects, mcommerce will represent the majority of ecommerce spending.

AlphaBlogInstagram01At the same time that mobile traffic outpaces non-mobile traffic, though, mobile apps remain extremely vulnerable. NowSecure claims that 85 percent of public mobile apps “have security vulnerabilities stemming from insecure data storage, network communications or coding practices.”

It doesn’t have to be that way, as I’ve written in my blog post, “What To Know About Low-Code/No-Code Platforms & Security.” One way to build great apps that are also secure is to choose a low-code/no-code platform that includes security built right into it. An article in Dark Reading, “In App Development, Does No-Code Mean No Security?” points out that Mounir Hahad, head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks believes that the right low-code/no-code platform may be even more secure that other development tools. That’s because low-code/no-code platforms assume that whoever is writing applications will not have a background in security, and so take care of a lot of security issues by themselves. He notes that with these platforms, “There's a huge step up [in security] because there is a common denominator as far as security best practices and implementations that framework providers build into their own SDLC [software development lifecycle]."

The upshot in all this? You need to move to mobile-first development, and for top security choose a low-code/no-code platform that has security built directly into it.

Choosing the Right Low-Code/No-Code Platform with the Best Security

Alpha TransForm and Alpha Anywhere are no-code/low-code business app development tools built with enterprise requirements, like high level security, in mind. Alpha Anywhere has the unique ability to rapidly create mobile-optimized forms and field apps that can easily access and integrate with any database or web service and can exploit built-in role-based security or robust offline functionality. Alpha TransForm and Alpha Anywhere can work independently or together as a single platform and are well-suited for both IT, citizen developers and other staff.  Alpha TransForm helps business users craft online or offline mobile apps in minutes that utilize the latest mobile features (camera, GPS, etc.) for fast, accurate data capture. Learn more take a free trial for 30 days

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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.


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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