Major Challenges Of Mobile Application Security Testing

Security is a hot topic in the digital world and with the exponential growth of mobile apps available, delivering a perfectly working, highly secure app is important to user retention. It is necessary to let users understand what information is being collected, as well as how and why organizations are collecting it. Apps should only collect absolutely important information.

This blog post will give an overview of mobile applications' security challenges as well as the requirements to overcome them and protect users’ data in the meantime.

Challenges Of Mobile Application Security Testing

Test Hidden Parts of the Application

Vulnerabilities can be found everywhere. If you write code that is a vulnerability itself, without preserving some parameters, you are serving users' data up to hackers on a silver platter.

SQL shortcodes for text boxes, radio buttons, drop-down menus, and other UI preceded elements can be subjected to injection attacks.

Utilization (and Integration) of Different Authentication Procedures

Authentication methods are a great idea to add an extra layer of security to personal data, but there are 2 potential difficulties.

Firstly, to utilize data stored on a remote server, a login is needed. Login information from your smartphone, your tablet, or your desktop that is sent to a server for confirmation requires being encrypted.

Security Breaches That Allow Malware to Be Installed

Certain kind’s breaches in the OS or app can cause malware to be installed on your device. Malware is a wicked software that can be embedded in a downloadable file and installs itself if it finds a special breach.

This software can damage a mobile device, an OS, or create a stream of information stored on the mobile devices and servers.

Unsecured Communications

Multiple messaging and VoIP calling apps started to encrypt messages, but most of them encrypt information just between users.

The app provider organization and prying third parties can still read them. The best option here would be end-to-end encryption, where only users with a specific key can decrypt the message. WhatsApp is a good example of messaging and communication encryption, even if it’s not perfect.

The Search for More Effective Mobile Testing Options

Leveraging mobile testing services that integrate smoothly into your team’s existing workflow can help alleviate the bottleneck of testing across multiple devices. Various companies are also opting to move away from using physical devices in-hand to do the majority of their QA testing. Various testing tools offer device emulators to streamline testing processes.

Being unfamiliar with the device/platform

No matter which device or platform you’re testing on, testers must know all of those devices and platforms. The app is particularly designed for each and the app’s interactions might vary between platforms and devices.

If you don’t know them, you cannot test the app against the conditions and for that specific device. For instance, swiping left and right or up and down might have different behavior by design on different platforms, so you’ll require knowing this and many other platform-specific features thoroughly.

No installation/upgrade testing

Installation and upgrade mobile testing services of an app are important. The installation is the first interaction a client will have with your application so any failures here will transfer them to your opponents.

Ensure you not only test both initial installation and upgrade, but also remove the app and reinstall it to understand what garbage is left (either purposefully or not) which might inhibit or help the user from reinstalling.

Courtesy: https://testingxperts.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/major-challenges-of-mobile-application-security-testing/