At any given point of time, users have 5 to 20 apps installed on their devices ranging from games, entertainment to payment and shopping apps, which have their personal information – from card details to social media credentials. While they won’t care if one of their gaming apps gets hacked but imagine the problems that will come up if one of their banking apps or eCommerce app with their billing details gets hacked. Because it’s a given that no one would want someone to have access to their personal information, there are some measures that both the developers and the users can take to prevent someone from hacking into their apps.
While a sound mobile app development company will take the measures in the development stage itself to prevent any mishaps, in case you are new in the business, the following points will help you in knowing the ways you can prevent the app from getting hacked.
- Token based authentication
A carefully designed token based system in place makes it easy for users to secure their app. The token specific authentication system makes sure that the API request is verified for credibility and then it only replies to the request once it has been verified.
- Use Keychain to store Data
Keychain is a secure storage container that is installed in the app in its development phase itself, which keep tabs of all the user data like their login credentials. It is preferred that the developers use these keychains for storing data instead of using p list files or NSUserDefaults. There are two keychains in the market presently – Android KeyChain and iCloud Keychain, both of them allow users to not login every time they open their application.
- Use fingerprint lock as app login
The chances of your fingerprint getting copied is 1 in 50,000 while your pin code getting copied is 1 in 10,000. This makes fingerprint login much secure than using passcodes. For its iOS 8 version, Apple even opened doors for developers to touch ID, making it ready for use to developers in the SDK.
- Notify users of any suspicious activity
Send over a text and email to users when you find that their account has been accessed in some other location or if you find that different passwords were entered more than three times. The move is already followed by Gmail, it notifies the users when their account is opened from a different device.
- Prevent reverse engineering
It’s not very difficult for the hackers to take away the source and data code. To save this from happening, confuse the hacker through renaming the important methods and classes in the preprocessor. Another way to protect this from happening is by dissembling the symbol table once the project ends.
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These five ways will help you in securing the app you are about to roll out to the public. These methods will ensure that you not only save your users from getting hacked but also save yourself from getting uninstalled from their devices.
While the above mentioned can only be followed by the developers, there are some things that a user can do from his end to protect themselves from getting hacked, such as – deleting caches, not using third party app stores, and by keeping the device’s software and system up to date.
Let us know if you have ever been hacked and what did you after in the comments below.
This article was written by Tripti. Currently writing for ChromeInfotech, one of India’s leading mobile app development company, Tripti has written on relationships, career, and real estate in her past. But now she is focusing on decoding the mobile world with Ed Sheeran playing on a record in the background.
