The Importance of Mobile Application Security
This is a guest post by Kerby Smith.
Mobile applications bring many benefits and could be very useful for those who appreciate the latest technology available. One of the reasons for the popularity of mobile applications is its inherent capability for faster data sharing. With a faster data sharing, the productivity level of your workforce also increases which in turn makes a major contribution in your business growth. However, using these technologies also have some risks and this is the reason why you need to be careful and employ security measures when using mobile applications.
The most common problem that every business owner or company encounters with mobile applications is security breaches. Although you may be careful and try to make sure that your confidential information is properly distributed, this is not enough to ensure the privacy of your valuable information.
User authentication, data security on the device, security analysis and monitoring, device management/application provisioning and data transit issues are some of the most common areas where there are higher levels of security risks. Familiarizing yourself with these aspects will give you a good idea of the things that you need to know about Mobile Application Security.
In order to solve security problems, you need to know the different kinds of threats in your data security. Trojan horses, viruses, spywares and malicious software are some of the threats to your precious data and they are the tools that hackers use to gain illegal access to your valuable data.
For example, one of the most popular mobile applications is Google Translate which allows you to translate important documents in different languages. You might want to download it to your mobile device but it could be filled with viruses, malwares, and spy wares. So as a safety measure it is advisable for you to scan it first with security scanners that are available in the Internet today. For example, you can use AVG antivirus which can detect viruses, malwares, spywares Trojans, malicious software and suspicious tracking cookies. If the scan results show that there are no threats found and the application is clean then you can proceed downloading it.
Data security is very essential especially in business and if you don’t pay attention to it when using mobile applications, your data could be damaged, lost or worst of all fall in the wrong hands. On the other hand, if you have applied preventive security measures before downloading a mobile app, you can enjoy the benefits of the mobile applications you have downloaded.
Author Bio:
Guest post contributed by Kerby Smith, on behalf of FileTrek.com – a mobile content management and tracking solution provider that offers Collaborative Online Workspace and Mobile Workforce Management.
Great article, I think you did a great job at presenting the aspects of mobile applications security. In addition, I think we should apply techniques for creating mobile applications. I believe that integrating security into each phase of the SDLC (Software Development LifeCycle) is a huge step forward to creating secure applications. For further reading about mobile application security, I invite you to check this blog post: http://blog.securityinnovation.com/blog/2012/08/mobile-application-security-testing-faqs-post-1.html
I agree with you.
Concern of mobile security is big issue now,
Maximum people download contents from internet without
having knowledge how they infected from these several photo,eBook or applications.
In today’s time mobile security is very important because many people keep their important things in their mobiles and many transactions are done via mobile (bank transactions) and it is very important that their mobile should be secure.
Most of the day I used my mobile phone for online banking and that is how important mobile application security for me. Your phone will be safe as long as you will not visit nasty sites. LOL