The majority of developers are not security experts, and secure coding is historically not identified as a priority. Oftentimes, the arduous task of vulnerability identification and remediation cannot be successfully addressed by limited IT security resources.
Look for an app development services provider who offers a time-saving solution for all types of security testing — outsourced, individual, and enterprise-wide analysis — and for all types of users, including application developers, build managers, Quality Assurance (QA) teams, penetration testers, security auditors, and senior management.
This is especially important when it comes to mobile apps, which have become business essentials. After all, 4.8 billion mobile handsets are currently in use — and 19% of those are smartphones, up 2% from just last year .
Then there’s the Internet, which now claims some 2.2 billion users, 1.3 billion of whom access it via some sort of personal computer (desktop, laptop, ultrabook, netbook, tablet).
New kinds of security issues arise almost daily in this dynamic mobile apps arena. So in addition to the in-depth experience with Apple’s iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry OS mobile application development that’s so necessary to getting your mobile app to market quickly, your app development services provider needs to be highly security conscious, too.
This means more than merely understanding mobile app security issues. It also means having the ability to follow mobile app security trends and developments — because the last thing you want is a hot new mobile app that compromises your customers’ data and privacy.
The historic lack of attention to security during application development also means that the apps your business uses may well be vulnerable to hackers in ways you never imagined. I’ll explore that in my next blog entry — and offer some ideas regarding what you can do about it.
