Tech Wizard Steve Jobs didn’t understand the potential of third-party mobile apps that turned mobile phones into smartphones, instead advocating the usage of mobile web-pages accessed through iPhone’s Safari browser. Fast-forwarding to now, across Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, we see a flood of apps for everything, from turning your camera flash into a flashlight, controlling household thermostats and baby monitors, to remotely unlocking your cars. Not surprisingly, apps are among the main reasons why people buy phones today, making them indispensable in our world of technology.
As many pros as apps offer, they do have certain cons as well. The most important drawback of apps is the unprecedented amount of user information that they demand, often much more than the user recognizes or the app requires. For instance, the Facebook app tracks our personal information, keeps tabs on the searches we enter on different websites and our locations, offering them to advertisers; which is why we get advertisements on things we need when we need them. The issue is the amateurish level of the app programmers who aren’t always aware of information security, causing these apps to leak sensitive user information to other platforms using unencrypted formats that make it more vulnerable. They often care more about the presentation of the information rather than the information itself, eliminating valuable data.
The way to resolve such problems is for the owners of mobile platforms (Google, Microsoft) to proactively influence the designers of apps. The app designers must also become more security conscious in their design, which can further be fostered by app stores that must mandate design standards and privacy disclosures. Apps would be required to display exactly what user information they will collect and who they will share it with. And finally, with apps being created for almost everything, we can create an app security system that estimates the user security each app provides. An independent cybersecurity organization could take on the responsibility of testing and rating the security of apps as well as the gadgets they control, and these ratings could be displayed in the app stores.
For further information, please click on https://www.arunvishwanath.us/2016/04/01/time-to-rethink-apps-security/