Mobile apps are hands down, one of the best things that have happened to both businesses as well as people in general.
Do you have to market your product?
Do you want to get instant feedback from your customers?
Do you, as a customer, want a company to serve you faster, better, while providing you with a variety of options to choose from?
A mobile app is an answer to so many questions, that it has become a permanent fixture in everyone’s lives today. But, doesn’t buying something entail spending money as well?
Doesn’t ease communication means exchanging data and sometimes very personal and sensitive data over the phone? It is this ardent use of mobile apps that have started raising some very important questions about the security of our personal lives.
It is usually an app that deals either with monetary transactions or that has important or sensitive information stored with it which could be used against either the business in question or its app users, that gets targeted by hackers.
They disable the security of the application, mess with the key features, finally stealing all the data they want and creating havoc.
It is, therefore, healthcare, banking, and even e-commerce related companies that find themselves always struggling with the idea of getting better security for their applications.
The latest development in the hacking community, though, seems to be keeping a close eye on the chats that take place in an app.
suddenly; the businesses all around have come to realize how chats have led them to a state of increased vulnerability to any kind of cyber threat.
The situation is appalling, to say the at least because chats are again a feature used by apps that represent different kinds of companies, that in turn belong to a wide variety of industries.
So again, the most attractive targets become healthcare, e-commerce, banking, and such other industries.
The Modern Rules Of Secure Chat Mobile App.
The solution now lies in every custom mobile application development company pulling up its sleeves, and getting down to work.
The work here is to first understand an app’s security, especially adhering to how chats work; and then making it stronger and more reliable.
Secure the Data Storage
The idea is to store as less data on the client’s side as possible; that will aid in making your app more secure.
But, numerous times, you won’t be able to get out of the tricky situation, when you have to let some sensitive information remain stored on the client side.
In such cases, you don’t have to worry; you just have to come up with a more sophisticated technical solution to provide high-security storage to your client.
You can use realm.io which not only encrypts data but also helps reduce the app development time.
First, it uses OpenSSL. Second, on providing it with a 64-bit encryption key, AES-256 transparently encrypts and decrypts the Realm data, following it up with SHA-2 HMAC hash verification.
In terms of framework, either Realm or CoreData would do for iOS development. But, you will, of course, have to make sure to use data protection.
You can go to the SQLCipher library, which is a third party open source library for SQLite that is again a very frequently used local storage for CoreData.
SQLCipher library provides 256-bit AES encryption; it is great, except this one small problem – it takes a lot of memory space, therefore slowing down the application’s performance by a bit.
Secure the Exchange of Data
There are certain rules and regulations that are set by the platform, as well as whichever industry the app belongs to.
For example, healthcare and banking are such industries that would without a question; require detailed information about a person.
An app that represents a hospital or a bank, hence, could put the said person in a great deal of danger if the sensitive data about him was to run loose.
For mobile app developers today, to ensure safe and secure communication between a client and the server, to strictly adhere to the platform as well as the industry guidelines, is a thing of paramount importance.
So as to not let any data or the process of exchange/ transfer of data be vulnerable to any cyber threat, you should always set up TLS/SSL. Upon it, you can add an additional level of security, in case the data is encrypted prior to sending it via TLS.
Use End-to-End Encryption
One of the most popular ways to market these days is for the companies to retrieve some of the messages, in order to get a better idea about what their target audience is like as well as what they like.
These companies then, won’t indulge in end-to-end encryption, as that would mean even if they do intercept, they would get the message in a scrambled state (encrypted), and so never be able to decipher it.
It could hurt their marketing campaign, it could have them look for options other than checking the personal messages of people, but the special algorithm to induce end-to-end encryption would ensure better security of their application.
To say that it’s a challenge for mobile app developers as well every mobile application development company out there, to live up to the expectations of the client company and the end users, in terms of outstanding performance, creative output, and robust security of an app – is an understatement.
But, understatement or not, it is the truth of today; and for an app to do well without creating a catastrophe, it is a necessity as well.