The open online community OWASP identifies ten typical security issues facing the vast majority of modern apps:
- Improper credential usage;
- Inadequate supply chain security;
- Insecure authentication/authorization;
- Insufficient input/output validation;
- Insecure communication;
- Inadequate privacy controls;
- Insufficient binary protections;
- Security misconfiguration;
- Insecure data storage;
- Insufficient cryptography.
At the same time, developers shouldn't consider security only as an end-stage measure within the development process. Even a single compromised element can result in a loss of user trust that is impossible to restore. We've built our mobile app development process so that security becomes part of the product lifecycle. Below, we'll explore the most typical mobile software vulnerabilities and our mobile app security best practices in more detail.
Why Mobile App Security Matters for Businesses
As you can understand, the cost of a mobile software vulnerability for its owners is far greater than the investment in preventing it, at least because a user data leak means not only fines but also a loss of trust, which directly affects the app’s profitability. That's why we consider mobile app security a fully-fledged business factor, along with the app’s functionality, user experience, design, and monetization model.
As global practice shows, any negative data incident can instantly become public and create a feeling of insecurity among the audience. Restoring a reputation after a leak is nearly impossible, not to mention retaining affected users. In particular, world-famous examples like Facebook and Binance have prompted us to provide app data protection through end-to-end encryption, access segmentation, and secure key storage – this way, we eliminate the risk of unauthorized access even if one system element is compromised.
Furthermore, modern mobile apps must have GDPR and CCPA compliance. Failure to comply can result in fines that can exceed a company's revenue for several years. To prevent this, we conduct a legal review of the app architecture before launch, ensuring compliance mechanisms (including consent management, transparency of data processing, and the ability to delete data upon user request). We'll return to best practices below, but for now, let's look at the most common mobile app security threats.
Common Mobile App Security Threats in 2025
Attack scenarios become increasingly sophisticated, which is why it's so important to act proactively, performing app penetration testing and simulating attacker actions – actually, this is the only way to fix potential vulnerabilities before they cause damage. Specifically, these treats include:
- Data leaks and breaches. User data leaks most often result in the loss of user bases or financial transactions, thereby increasing the risk of business closure. So, for data breach prevention, we implement multi-layered data encryption, role-based access control, and a user activity monitoring system. All of this helps us promptly detect suspicious activity and respond accordingly. This prevents hackers from causing serious damage through the use of stolen data, thereby jeopardizing your business's reputation.
- Insecure data storage. Another common cause of attacks is insecure data storage on user devices. To address this issue, we use secure containers, follow generally accepted hardware encryption standards, and add dynamic, auto-renewing tokens. This ensures that even if a user's device is hacked or lost, sensitive data won’t fall into the hands of third parties.
- Weak authentication. In a nutshell, it is another source of account compromise. To prevent this, we use multi-factor authentication with the ability to integrate biometrics and hardware keys. This minimizes the likelihood of hacking, boosting end users' willingness to store private data in the app.
- Man-in-the-middle attacks. Finally, it's worth mentioning man-in-the-middle attacks – they are especially dangerous for financial and eCommerce apps due to the possibility of transaction interception. We prevent this by implementing SSL pinning, encrypting traffic, and regularly updating certificates. All this allows us to eliminate the risk of connection spoofing and, thus, ensure high-level payment security.
If you would like to ensure top-level security for your mobile app, feel free to contact us , and we'll take care of it at every stage of its development.
Best Practices for Mobile App Security
Now, let's move on to the best secure coding practices our team applies in mobile development projects.
- Secure authentication and authorization. In enterprise applications, we never limit ourselves to basic login and password verification. Instead, we implement multi-factor authentication and a role-based permissions system to ensure that each app function is accessible only to authorized users.
- Data encryption at rest and in transit. Any data an application stores or transmits must be encrypted: for example, through TLS 1.3 for transmission and AES-256 for storage. Today, these protocols ensure users' trust the most, while guaranteeing that both personal data and transactions remain private at all stages.
- Regular app security audits and penetration testing. Without regular checks, even solutions with the cleanest code can be vulnerable. This is why systematic code and infrastructure security audits (in some cases, involving external specialists) and attack simulations (pentesting) are crucial. This way, we identify mobile app vulnerabilities before hackers can access them.
- Secure API design and usage. APIs are also a frequent target for attacks, so we always keep this in mind, performing secure API integration based on the principle of least necessary access, using only time-proven user authentication methods, request rate limits, and user activity logging.
- Session management and timeout policies. Finally, we ensure automatic session termination after a predetermined period of inactivity and implement re-authentication mechanisms if users perform actions that can compromise their personal data.
Of course, these are just some of the practices used at WEZOM to ensure the complete security of mobile software. If you would like to implement them in your project, write or call us, and we’ll discuss our future collaboration.
Compliance with Privacy Regulations
Regarding privacy regulations, we always build our mobile app architecture with GDPR and CCPA compliance in mind, as well as, optionally, local security requirements. This facilitates the entry of mobile software into international markets without the risk of multi-million dollar fines and generally ensures trust with end users.
In terms of specific practices, our team implements transparent mechanisms for obtaining user consent for data processing and prevents abuse of that data – this means that the app receives only the information necessary to perform the user's intended actions. This approach reduces the risk of leaks and, overall, makes the software less vulnerable.
To summarize, for us, mobile app security begins at the code level – that's why we've been following a strict internal secure coding guide for many years, which clearly outlines recommendations for preventing common vulnerabilities like SQL injections, XSS, insecure serialization, and more. We also always use specialized libraries and static analysis tools to identify errors even before testing.
Developer Tips for Secure Coding
As we've already emphasized above, in our company, secure mobile development begins long before the testing phase. Specifically, we follow an internal rule: every developer undergoes training on secure coding and receives practical case studies that cover typical attacks and their consequences. Therefore, any new app feature is built from the ground up with the possibility that a potential attacker might attempt to hack it.
For example, the main security threats to mobile software aren't rare (or unknown to the global IT community) attacks, but rather the most common mistakes made by inexperienced teams. These include SQL injections, insecure memory management, incorrect data validation, XSS vulnerabilities, and many others.
To prevent this, we have strict code review rules, where every pull request is checked for readability, efficiency, and compliance with security standards. Furthermore, we use checklists in every project that cover the most common vulnerability scenarios. As a result, our clients receive a mobile application that is completely resistant to common attacks, thus minimizing the risk of their reputational damage.
As for security tools, after years of experience, we have decided to rely on proven tools (rather than inventing our own). For example, we use narrow-focused encryption libraries, ready-made modules for secure authentication, and certified SDKs for working with payment systems. We also always perform static and dynamic code analysis, using a specialized automation tech stack that instantly identifies potential vulnerabilities.
Ultimately, such a meticulous approach to secure mobile app development significantly reduces the human factor and allows us to detect problems before the software reaches the production stage.
How WEZOM Ensures Security in Mobile App Development
WEZOM is a company that always adheres to the security-first principle, according to which every project begins with a business risk analysis, and the application architecture is built on this basis. We also subject every feature to a security review, and, after release, implement a continuous monitoring and update system. This is why clients sometimes turn to us not for end-to-end development, but specifically for testing (including security one).
Let’s consider this case, for example: a client approached us for comprehensive testing and quality assurance to ensure the reliability of their fintech platform for end users. To achieve this, we engaged our quality assurance and automated testing specialists from the very beginning of the project to precisely define the testing goals and objectives, the scope of work, and the specifics of the test environment – in short, everything that would help us determine the best testing approaches, both manual and automated.
By the time the client contacted us, the client’s in-house team had already completed a number of dynamic and static tests, giving us a solid foundation for further work. So, upon completion, we:
- Ensured 100% test coverage of the project's critical functions by generating over 500 test cases;
- Reduced regression testing time by 50% through automation;
- Implemented over 100 user scenarios, which provided the client with an understanding of how to boost UX;
- Achieved increased system stability through successful regression tests.
Overall, thanks to the effective collaboration between the client's in-house team and ours, the platform was launched with a minimum number of bugs and received positive feedback from end users.
Conclusion
Mobile app security in 2025 has the potential to become a key customer engagement channel, while losing control over it often leads to a loss of credibility with the target audience. So, if you'd like to make your software's security one of its fundamental advantages, feel free to contact us, and we'll help you make it a reality.
