The risk environment for businesses is forever changing. Just when you thought you have dealt with the latest major business risk; another issue seems to come blaring around the corner.
The past 18 months has already seen bushfires and COVID-19 wreak havoc on businesses’ supply chains, against a backdrop of changing regulations, ongoing trade wars, continued political uncertainty and cyber threats.
That’s not to mention the long risk assessment to do list. On that list: mobile apps.
The organisation dilemma creates a ‘too hard basket’ full of mobile apps
Mobile apps are frustrating and competing interests end up creating vulnerability silos. Risk officers must navigate this organisational dilemma, which leaves them between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, you have business departments launching mobile apps seemingly on a whim. They brief app developers to come up with creative apps with compelling features, all in the name of keeping up with the competition and retaining customers. Security risks just do not come into the equation.
On the other hand, you have busy security and IT teams. They are typically under resourced and are more concerned about outmanoeuvring well-resourced hackers, preventing them from gaining access to the enterprise network. Mobile apps, with all their variables and constant updates, are just too resource intensive to manage.
In the end, it falls on the risk list and, honestly, you have bigger fish to fry. Mobile apps quickly get put into the too hard basket – but a “she’ll be right” attitude could give away the keys to your kingdom.
The biggest risk to mobile app security is procrastination
Putting mobile apps into “the too hard basket” leaves businesses increasingly exposed to hackers.
Hackers today see mobile apps as a weak spot for many businesses, and an easy entry point. As most mobile apps aren’t written with security in mind, many leave sensitive information or code out in the open. This enables hackers to essentially read the app’s recipe and find ways to exploit it or steal your secret sauce.
This is leaving businesses hugely vulnerable to attack or a data breach through their mobile apps. In fact, in a recent study, approximately 41% of all mobile apps were found to have high-risk security vulnerabilities, of which nearly all (89%) could be exploited by malware.
With increased usage and collection of highly sensitive data through these applications, the risks of security flaws within applications can be detrimental to businesses. Wouldn’t it be great if we could tick mobile app security off our lists, particularly as cyber security risks are seen as one of the top three threats to business by CEOs in 2020.
Shield your secret sauce
Today, solutions exist that leverage the latest in encryption technology to bake security directly into any app build. This enables coders to build the functionality the business requires, without having to worry about how secure their lines of code are.
How?
Through app shielding. According to Gartner, app shielding is a set of technologies that modify an application’s source, byte or binary code, to make the application more resistant to intrusion, tampering and reverse engineering. This removes the risk of mobile apps being an easy attack vector for hackers.
It’s like writing your recipe in an alien language, keeping your secret sauce safe from prying eyes or preventing others from inserting their own ingredients.
This allows developers to code in peace and security teams can be at peace knowing that one of the businesses mobile apps won’t end up being a back door to their network.
More importantly, it allows you to tick mobile app risk assessment off that too hard list, by implementing a policy that requires all mobile apps to have app shielding. Not only will you put an end to the organisational squabble, but you can go back to working on the other big risks your business will undoubtably face in the coming months and years.
Learn more about how you can tick mobile apps off the risk list with app shielding.
